Amazon announced Tuesday that it is testing a one-hour restaurant delivery service in select Seattle ZIP codes as part of its Prime Now app.
Amazon employees love the convenience and ease of restaurant-delivery services so much they decided to create one of their own.
Amazon.com announced Tuesday that it is testing a one-hour restaurant-delivery service in select Seattle ZIP codes as part of its Prime Now delivery-in-hours app launched last month.
With the move, Amazon joins an increasingly crowded market in Seattle, which serves the city’s time-starved techies with food delivery at any time of the day. Amazon’s service is available only in parts of the city now, though the e-commerce giant said that it plans to expand in the coming days.
It’s likely other cities will soon get restaurant delivery as well. Amazon often tests in one or more metros at first before expanding broadly.
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The delivery service is live for Prime members, who pay a yearly $99 subscription fee for services such as two-day shipping, streaming videos and music. The company launched Prime Now in Seattle last month, offering (through the Prime Now app) one-hour delivery for $7.99 on selected items, or at no added cost in a few hours.
Items from restaurants will be driven to a customer’s door from the same Prime Now drivers who deliver other Prime Now products. The drivers are a mix of contractors and full-time employees, Amazon said.
For now, a limited number of restaurants are offering delivery through the app, including Skillet Diner, Re:public and Green Leaf Vietnamese Restaurant. Amazon promises there will be no menu markups. The company is taking a commission on each order, though it is not disclosing the percentage.
Amazon said the service is being offered at no added charge for a limited time in Seattle. Each order must be from a single restaurant.
The tech giant’s movement into the market means big competition for Peach, a growing startup founded by former Amazon employees. The service delivers preset lunches each day to large office buildings. The company raised an $8 million round last month from Madrona Venture Group and Vulcan Capital.
Peach CEO Nishant Singh said not much will change for the company after Amazon’s announcement, noting that Amazon already had some restaurant-delivery services through Amazon Local.
“Peach is in the lunch-curation business,” Singh said. “We exactly know what a customer sitting in the Amazon Ruby building (would) like to eat for lunch on a Tuesday.”
Amazon may be entering a crowded space, but the company has a clear advantage — a loyal following of millions of Prime members who are already accustomed to its customer service and can bypass the logistics of signing up for a new service.