Can they gather the groceries in the Seattle area and then run them north across the border to me? Groceries here are hella expensive.
Amazon to deliver groceries in 20 markets by 2014
Amazon is planning to kick off a major expansion of its AmazonFresh grocery delivery business as early as this week, sources close to the company claim. The online retailer has been quietly offering the fresh-food delivery service to customers in the Seattle area for years, but Reuters reports that it now plans to launch it in …
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 09:04 GMT MrXavia
I wish I could get Occado here, but I am not in their delivery area, shame really as there are plenty of people I know who would probably switch to them from others if they could get deliveries... Well guess I will stick to Tescos, apart from not stocking the coffee I like, they are pretty good!
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 12:34 GMT Rampant Spaniel
Not to piss you off further ;-) but they rock. They aren't expensive, at least not big picture expensive. Some of their stuff is a little more but they have some awesome fresh produce which lasts a lot longer than stuff from asda \ tesco and some stuff thats hard to get elsewhere (fresh dijon mayo for example). Nice to only have to shop every week or two rather than twice a week because the 'fresh' stuff kept going rotten.
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 07:44 GMT JDX
Seemed obvious
I didn't know Amazon already did this but it seemed obvious, they are one player who can compete with supermarkets. Online grocery shopping exists in the US but doesn't seem very well known about, so they could "do an Apple" and get people thinking they invented it!
Over here, they would have an uphill battle against Tesco & Asda who both have strong online delivery infrastructure.
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 13:21 GMT Richard Gadsden
Re: Seemed obvious
And Sainsbury's and Ocado.
Very competitive market, and the supermarket chains don't need to build warehouses, as they just use their pre-existing shops.
For the Americans, you place an order for food, with a delivery time (a one-hour slot for delivery). A couple of times a day, various staff shoppers are given shopping lists and go around the supermarket to collect your delivery, which is then loaded into a chilled delivery vehicle (a big van / small truck, which has a small freezer compartment and the rest is chilled).
You see the (logo'd) delivery vans everywhere. Loads of people prefer to get their food shopping delivered.
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 12:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Tax?
Here in the US, many states (currently) don't collect sales tax from Amazon orders because Amazon doesn't have a physical presence in the state of the customer (If I buy online from Apple / Walmart / Target / Macys / etc, I have to pay my state's sales tax because there are bricks-and-mortar Apple / Walmart / Target / Macys / etc stores in my state).
If Amazon build a load of 'local' warehouses, then maybe I and others would have to start paying tax on ALL Amazon purchases, unless of course the Amazon grocery business is actually a (legally) different business operation. For me, not paying sales tax is a minor benefit; give me Amazon any day over shopping malls with the "Am I bovvered" sales staff, but I digress somewhat.
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 08:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hold on a second, you mean to tell me that in the US you can’t get groceries delivered to you almost anywhere already? In the UK I can get my groceries delivered to my door, and I live in a small town less than 2,000 people and the nearest big town > 10,000 is 20 miles away. When I lived in Dubai I could get a single can of Coke delivered for free.
Is this like mobile phones in the US all over again, where they are way behind the rest of the developed world as the big incumbent players don’t want to bother doing something, and they make sure no one else can afford to. I do small independent stores offer delivery in the US?
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 09:10 GMT JDX
Walmart and Safeway definitely run such services, very similar to Tesco here - we used them -but in small towns I'm not sure. You have to remember America is on a whole different scale to the UK; saying "they're backward because we have X and they don't" ignores the fact that scale affects financial viability. In the UK you are never far from a supermarket (with a few exceptions), in the US you can often have several miles between houses.
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 14:19 GMT grantmasterflash
We used to get groceries delivered to our doors until we realized that paying double for our groceries and having them thawing on our doorstep when we get home from work is a bad idea. The UK never got that message because they're used to paying double for everything anyway.
Albertsons and Safeway both rolled out home delivery about 5 years ago. At first you'd see trucks everywhere and not you rarely see any. That's because paying someone else to go around and pack up your groceries, get in a truck and deliver them to your door costs a lot more than just driving to the store yourself. As anyone who's looked at Amazon grocery prices will know they're very expensive, sometimes unbelievably so. I don't know why they'd want to get into such a low profit area.
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 08:59 GMT MrXavia
There not a chance I'd trust Amazon with things I eat!, and I do have nearly all my food delivered already, but I will stick to the providers I know, with quality I can trust and a have a history of being good! Oh and businesses that pay UK taxes on UK sales!
I'm sure if they do this in the UK they will say all sales are done out of the uk and its only the delivery that is in the UK....
On the other hand, if this means Amazon have their own trucks that actually might be able to deliver £200+ worth of goods without leaving it in the rain for anyone to steal then great!
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Wednesday 5th June 2013 20:55 GMT arrbee
Ah, the wonders of modern technology.
Back in the 1960s we had to pay nothing at all to get our groceries delivered by van.
I still remember trying (and failing) to keep up with the bloke totting up the total price while moving his pencil down the list of individual items - 3 columns to add, of course.
[ can we have an icon for " I'm getting too old for this shit " ? ]