it's a new name and the addition of non-grocery items to their existing grocery delivery service. presumably they have some customers for this already. letting them order other store items seems like a fairly obvious move, even if the whole program doesn't look that attractive compared to prime.
I think this is to bolster fresh and prime now. As far as I know Fresh is currently limited to very few areas. This might allow them to extend that. Prime Now in my areas has a very limited grocery selection from Amazon itself, but also delivers from a local chain that I see as a Whole Foods copy cat. This will allow them to drastically extend the groceries they make available themselves and get way more control over what's available.
This enables them to very quickly scale out AmazonFresh, which to date is only in about a dozen areas, to every single area that WholeFoods is in.
If you have not used AmazonFresh its pretty clearly a competitor for the same income level people as a Whole Foods customer and already offers a ton of organic/fair trade/etc stuff at Whole Foods level prices.
They can also leverage the WholeFoods brand for items, bringing additional customer trust to the quality.
Further, this makes PrimeNow delivery cheaper for them. Again, if you have used AmazonFresh you know that you can add PrimeNow-style Amazon stuff to your purchase for the delivery slot. This brings that capability to every WholeFoods location and expands the reach of people buying PrimeNow items (e.g. people will add things to their grocery delivery at a lower threshold than they will pay $5 and reorder on PrimeNow the same thing).
Amazon has Prime Now, a grocery delivery service mostly via Whole Foods and a few other stores in major metro areas. Grocery delivery isn't anything new in big cities, but their UI and selection is far above anyone else.
This. I have started using Prime Now a lot over the last few months because the prices for non-perishable groceries are cheaper than Target/Safeway consistently. The gap has been fresh food, and to fill this gap, Prime Now partners with local stores (Sprouts in Oakland, for example).
The acquisition makes WF an instant partner of Prime Now (unintended pun). The demographic that uses the app and wants groceries now has a reliable and recognized source for said needs. This will only increase the use of Prime Now, thereby making Prime a more entrenched and indispensable service for a certain demographic. Better yet, the benefits will be symbiotic: WF can benefit from Amazon's advanced logistics capabilities. These efficiencies might help the brand shake off its reputation for super high prices.
Strategically, this is a slam dunk for Amazon and certain segments of its customers.
So it seems that most people assume that this kind of shop is a replacement to major grocery stores. I dont think that this is what their initial customer base is going to be. I see this more inline with "Fresh & Easy" kind of markets where on the go customers can just stop by for a quick bite or a quick pick up of resources like a 7/11 or something similar. I can see that they may want to expand to supermarkets but I think this is more addressing the quick easy supermarket market and focusing on easy pickups rather then full fledged supermarkets for all grocery needs. I may have missed something but that would be the most logical and successful way for Amazon to introduce this technology.
They figure that if you already get groceries from them they can eliminate all their other shipping costs eventually. Just throw whatever it is your buying on top of your grocery cart. It's an infrastructure play.
I'm pretty skeptical Amazon knows how to run a premium grocer. I hope they didn't do this only cause they saw Whole Foods as a way to super charge their prime pantry program.
I had said many times Amazon had too many ways to order groceries:
1. Amazon.com
2. Amazon Prime Pantry
3. Amazon Fresh
4. Whole Foods via Amazon Prime Now
5. Amazon items via Amazon Prime Now*
*I never figured out what exactly this was. Was it just Amazon.com listing reproduced in the Prime Now app? Was it Amazon Fresh and/or Prime Pantry items? Was it some other set of items?
I think the parent comment was sarcastically implying that of course Whole Foods is going to deliver their own groceries now that they are part of Amazon.
"The transaction also may help Amazon sideline Instacart Inc., a startup that has delivered grocery orders from Whole Foods stores in more than 20 states and Washington, D.C."
... I wonder how this will play. Is Instacart's business threaten by losing Whole Food as a client?
Although there could be a problem, this article is weird. It cites expansion in Prime Now, which is a crappy source of groceries.
Amazon deserves a lot of the blame, though, as they have such confusing branding: Amazon Fresh (only works on web and phone); Amazon Prime Now (phone app), Amazon Prime Pantry (hard to use), plus the amazon dash wand which confusingly may place objects into your Fresh cart, or on a shopping list you can find in the regular Amazon app, or in a list only available with the Alexa app. I don't know what's going on with this supposedly customer-focused company.
In any case: I ditched my cars last year so mostly need delivery. The cheapest of the walking distance grocery stores is Whole Foods, and since I had so many problems with Instacart I've pretty much adopted Amazon Fresh. It actually works OK as long as you don't mind waiting until the next day (same day slots are rarely available in Palo Alto). But I get veggies and meat delivered with different services; Amazon's prices aren't that great.
Whole foods has pivoted from your local health foods store--at a national scale to a national superstore--at a higher quality. Grocery and especially natural groceries are turbulent. Their customers generally check enough boxes to end up in the enthusiast/early-adopter category. Even if the Amazon purchase didn't turn them off, targeting the more casual "trader joes" class makes more sense.
My personal concerns with grocery delivery and automation in general is that the automation of my boring daily tasks might not free up more leisure time, but more time to spend working.
I don't order things online that I can easily get by going to a local store.
> Do you see value in that part of the service via Amazon Prime after they bought out WF
It has no value to me, but I can imagine it having value for others. Even if I did order groceries online for delivery, I still wouldn't be ordering them from WF, though.
I am not sure how the logistics work with participating stores but I would really like to see them make this an easy way for small local businesses to compete with Amazon. Basically a platform for them to list their products and the logistics to collect and deliver them.
This service seems to be mostly orthogonal to Instacart in that Instacart provides perishables but you can only order from a single shop at a time where with Express you can order products from across multiple stores but they focus more on non-grocery items.
A better headline would have been "Amazon merges Prime Pantry into regular .com site".
> "As part of our commitment to delivering the best possible customer experience, we have decided to transfer Amazon Pantry selection to the main Amazon.com store so customers can get everyday household products faster, without an extra subscription or purchase requirement"
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