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Amazon suspends Prime Pantry to handle its backlog of orders
If you're looking to order food online while you're holed up at home amid the COVID-19 outbreak, you won't be able to do so through Amazon's Prime Pantry for now. The company has paused new orders through the service, which offers household and non-perishable pantry items, for now as it fulfills its backlog.
AmazonFresh grocery delivery expands to Houston, Minneapolis and Phoenix
AmazonFresh, one of two grocery delivery services Amazon offers in the US, is expanding to three new cities. Starting today, residents in Houston, Minneapolis and Phoenix can get groceries delivered to their homes from Amazon in two hours or less. To access AmazonFresh, you'll need to pay $14.99 per month on top of your Prime subscription. The minimum for free delivery is $35, otherwise, it's $9.99 per order. Customers can pay an additional $7.99 for faster, one-hour delivery.
Amazon partners with EatLove to deliver personalized meals
Following yesterday's team-up between Amazon and Allrecipes, the online shopping giant is announcing yet another grocery delivery partnership with EatLove, makers of an app for personalized recipes. Once you build up a meal plan of your own, you can quickly get the items you need through AmazonFresh. EatLove isn't just another recipe service: It accounts for dietary restrictions, medical issues and offers up daily reminders to make sure you follow its recommendations. Naturally, the integration is only available in markets where AmazonFresh is available, but it sounds like a genuinely useful addition to EatLove.
Amazon and Allrecipes team up to take on Blue Apron’s meal kits
We've heard rumblings that Amazon might be ready to take on Blue Apron with "prepared food kits," and now it looks like it's finally here. Today, AmazonFresh and Allrecipes.com announced a new partnership that will allow for meal preparation delivery. Top recipes on the site will now have an embedded option allowing users to purchase the ingredients for same-day delivery through Amazon Fresh.
Postmates promises 30-minute grocery deliveries in New York
Postmates isn't just for late-night take-out delivery anymore. The service just launched grocery delivery in Los Angeles, Manhattan and San Francisco. It's called Fresh. More than that, the firm completely overhauled its app to make ordering a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper or a loaf of bread (or basically anything else you forgot while at the grocery store) a lot easier. A post on Medium claims that it shouldn't take more than a half an hour for your goods to arrive -- supposedly a quarter of the time some of its competitors. It's about the same wait time for a Postmates booze drop-off. Amazon Fresh, on the other hand can take hours to make a delivery.
Amazon scales back its Fresh delivery service in smaller cities
We've covered again and again how Amazon is interested in slowly establishing itself in every part of our lives, including in the food we buy and how we eat. The online retailer purchased organic food chain Whole Foods earlier this year, but Amazon has also been expanding its Amazon Fresh service, which provides same-day and next-day grocery delivery for Prime members. Users of the service pay an additional $15 per month, on top of the yearly Prime fee. But in a surprise move, according to Recode, it looks like Amazon is actually shutting down its Fresh delivery services in certain areas later this month.
Walmart's Jet.com has its own grocery brand just for millennials
Walmart has been battling it out with Amazon for some time now and last year it purchased Jet.com to give it an online edge. At the time, Walmart said that the acquisition would bring "fresh ideas and expertise, as well as an attractive brand with proven appeal, especially for millennials." Now it's using Jet.com to actively target "metro millennials," whatever those are, with a new grocery brand called Uniquely J.
Walmart’s online grocery shopping service will now accept EBT
The Amazon and Walmart rivalry continues as the latter announced today that its Online Grocery Pickup option will now be available to those using Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) credits. In June, Amazon reduced its Prime subscription cost for users receiving government assistance through EBT and earlier this year, the US Department of Agriculture cleared a pilot program that allowed Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program enrollees to use their benefits for online grocery services like AmazonFresh.
Amazon's acquistion of Whole Foods will make some groceries cheaper
Amazon announced today that its acquisition of Whole Foods will close on Monday August 28th and the finalized deal will come with a few perks to both the grocery chain's and Amazon's customers.
Amazon's Meal Kits are already available for some customers
Earlier this week, reports surfaced that Amazon had registered a trademark for a meal kit service with the slogan "We do the prep. You be the chef." And apparently those kits are already available to some AmazonFresh customers, one of whom told GeekWire that he began noticing them in his shopping searches a week or two ago.
Walmart takes on Amazon's grocery pickups with automated kiosks
Walmart isn't letting up in its quest to one-up Amazon whenever possible, especially when it comes to in-person pickups. The retailer is testing a kiosk in Oklahoma City that lets you pick up your online groceries at any time of the day or week. Instead of parking and waiting for a staffer to bring out your food, you enter a pickup code and wait for the kiosk to automatically fetch the order from bins inside. You need to spend at least $30 and order during store hours, but there are no special fees or other limitations. If you can't fetch your groceries until 3AM on Sunday, you're fine.
Amazon discounts Prime for customers with EBT cards
Amazon announced today that customers enrolled in a number of different government assistance programs can now get Prime subscriptions for $6 per month. As of now, the offer is limited to those with a valid EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) card, but the company plans to extend the benefits to assistance programs that don't use EBT in the future.
Amazon takes on supermarkets with drive-through grocery pickup
Over the last couple of decades, Amazon has slowly conquered the online retail space. The Seattle-based e-commerce company has made it possible to purchase any thing from books to live ladybugs within seconds. But the site hasn't seen the same success with groceries. With AmazonFresh, a monthly subscription for pantry items, the one-click convenience became available for food but consumers continue to stay skeptical of purchasing fruits and veggies online. Now, the company has launched AmazonFresh Pickup, essentially a drive-through, so shoppers can grab their groceries in-person but they never have to leave their car.
Amazon's next retail outlets are drive-up grocery stores
Seattle residents might be able to order groceries from AmazonFresh online and pick them up from a brick-and-mortar outlet in the near future. The city has given the company permission to install "AmazonFresh Pickup" signs in Seattle's Ballard and SoDo neighborhoods. GeekWire captured some photos of the locations under construction last month. Now the fillings it has unearthed indicate that the drive-up grocery outlets are almost ready to open for business. According to the documents, the shops will have signs that say "HELLO, BALLARD" and "HELLO, SODO." Their exterior walls will also be painted with slogans like "Shop online. Pick up here." and "Relax while we load your groceries."
Amazon and online grocery services will soon accept food stamps
Thanks to a pilot program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, families who rely on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy groceries will soon be able to use online services like Amazon and FreshDirect. When the two-year program goes live this summer, it has the potential to improve access to healthy food choices in communities that are often lacking in options.
Amazon makes food delivery cheaper for Prime members
Amazon has cut the price of an AmazonFresh membership down to just $14.99 a month as long as you also subscribe to Prime. For that, you'll be entitled to unlimited grocery deliveries in the locations where the service operates, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. It makes the business effectively a bolt-on for Amazon's paid tier which has developed substantially in the last few years. Users will be able to save a little bit of cash with the new charges compared to its predecessor, which was a $299 flat rate for a whole year. That should help beat back competition from traditional retailers like Walmart and Target, who are trying to catch up on this whole tech-based delivery lark from a standing start.
Amazon's grocery deliveries now cover 190 London postcodes
Amazon announced today that its Fresh grocery delivery service is now available in 190 Greater London postcodes. The online retailer is keen to highlight that the number of eligible postcodes has more than doubled since Fresh launched in early June; though, it almost achieved this milestone just a couple of weeks later when the service expanded past the 69 launch postcodes to cover a total of 128. Today's update comes soon after Amazon brought its £35 Dash scanner to the UK. With the device, you can add products to your virtual basket by simply reciting your shopping list into its microphone, or by using the on-board barcode scanner on your dangerously light bag of frozen chips.
Amazon brings its Dash grocery scanner to the UK
Now that Amazon's grocery delivery service has launched in the UK, many of the devices that make it easier to order food and household items are starting to make their way here too. The first is the Dash, a small handheld gadget that lets you add products to your basket with its barcode scanner or by simply using your voice. All that's then needed is to open the Amazon website or mobile app and complete your order.
Amazon opens up grocery deliveries to more of London
Amazon's grocery delivery service only went live in the UK a couple of weeks ago, but already the company is expanding beyond the launch footprint of various central and east London areas. As of today, Amazon Fresh is now available in 59 additional postcodes in northern, eastern and southern parts of the capital, taking the total up to 128 (full list here). Reside within one of those postcodes, and you can order any of over 130,000 everyday products for home delivery, including meat, seafood, fresh fruit and vegetables.
Amazon Fresh UK grocery delivery service launches in London
After months of testing and logistical planning, Amazon has finally launched its Fresh grocery delivery service in the UK. The company confirmed today that it will offer deliveries to Prime customers in 69 postcodes across central and east London in its first expansion outside of the US.
