back to article 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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  1. Greg J Preece

    Can they gather the groceries in the Seattle area and then run them north across the border to me? Groceries here are hella expensive.

    1. Rukario

      Even if they ran up as far as Blaine it's good enough. For me anyway. And believe it or not, there's a fair bit of groceries that aren't that much cheaper south of the border anymore.

      1. Greg J Preece

        Somehow i'm doubting you guys can pay $20 for a block of cheese. :-p

  2. Rampant Spaniel

    Used to love waitrose (occado or some silly name) delivery service in the UK. About time things caught up here.

    1. MrXavia
      Thumb Up

      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!

      1. 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.

  3. MACWINLINO
    Happy

    Book, Game and Food

    What more could a person want. Get food from the same place you can stream online movies.

    It is amazing to see how far Amazon has come since its early days. I foresee Amazon being the equivalent of the massive Walmart empire online.

    1. Tom_

      Re: Book, Game and Food

      It'd be better if they could stream the food too. I already have a streaming service for water, but if they could stream meat, chips and possibly mini cheddars then I'd definitely switch to them.

      1. beep54
        Happy

        Re: Book, Game and Food

        Ya know, normally I hate the 'LOL' thingy because I almost never actually laugh out loud at something (a 'hee' maybe). But this comment earns a full LOL from me :)

  4. Kaltern
    FAIL

    Pointless without decent delivery

    If Amazon keep using that very high class delivery company known as Yodel, then all their work is totally useless, as Yodel are pretty much the most unreliable company I've ever had to deal with.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Pointless without decent delivery

      Yeah right, they'll use a regular courier like yodel for groceries.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pointless without decent delivery

      The company I work for sends stuff with Yodel sometimes (if it's too big for Hermes and the customer hasn't paid extra for TNT) but they have a habit of not showing up.

  5. JDX Gold badge

    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.

    1. 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.

  6. Dave Cheetham

    Tax?

    Wonder whether they will pay it or say the orders are processed in some tax haven!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      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.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    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?

    1. JDX Gold badge

      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.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. 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.

      1. Richard Gadsden

        Thawing on your doorstep?

        None of the UK deliverers will deliver unless you're at home, but you book one-hour slots (usually going as late as 10pm), so it's not like you're left hanging around all day waiting for a delivery like furniture.

  8. MrXavia
    Facepalm

    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!

    1. JDX Gold badge

      No businesses pay tax on UK sales. They pay tax on profits.

      What makes you think supermarket chains don't use the same legal tricks Amazon do... if they don't Amazon will easily be able to undercut them.

  9. Piro Silver badge
    Pint

    You can already buy some items from Amazon

    For example, crisps and booze. But this is just shipped in the regular way, and of course the selection is random.

    AmazonFresh would presumably open up an epic selection of booze.

  10. Badvok
    Coat

    Produce

    Is it just me that gets annoyed when americans use 'produce' as a noun? Yes? OK, I'll get my coat.

  11. Mr Spock
    Boffin

    *cough*Kozmo*cough*

  12. 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 " ? ]

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