After launching physical bookstores and attempting to launch a cashier-free convenience store, Amazon will be diving into another kind of physical retail venue: grocery stores.
With the beta launch of the AmazonFresh Pickup today, Amazon will give customers the ability to order groceries, drive up to an AmazonFresh location, and have the food delivered to their trunk. Orders can be filled in as little as 15 minutes, according to a video announcement from Amazon.
Among the items that customers can purchase are meats, produce, bread, dairy, and household items, and there’s no order minimum. The service will be free to Amazon Prime subscribers, but during the beta launch period, it will only be usable by Amazon employees, reports TechCrunch. The two AmazonFresh stores are in Seattle’s SODO and Ballard neighborhoods, as reported by GeekWire last week when permit fillings for the locations surfaced.
Reports of the AmazonFresh Pickup service emerged back in 2015, when Amazon said that it wanted to build physical locations where customers could pick up preordered groceries; at the time the proposed location was Sunnyvale, California. In the initial plans, customers would also select a pickup time window after placing an order, and they can swing by to pick them up during that time period.
The AmazonFresh Pickup service is one of the company’s many food-related ventures. Last year, it also launched its own private-label food, Wickedly Prime.
