Amazon Fresh Expands Delivery Area!

At work yesterday, I discovered that Amazon Fresh (a home grocery delivery service started by Amazon.com) has expanded it's delivery service to new regions, including Downtown Seattle, First Hill, Bothell, Snoqualmie, and, well, BEACON HILL!!! Yay!

I've been waiting for this day, and have been perhaps a little bitter that they've delivered to our Zip Code for quite some time... just not to our part of the zip code. But given who I work for, I understood why they didn't roll the service out too quickly. With the history of Dot.com home delivery services being far from excellent, Amazon Fresh needed to prove it's business model and get some practice in the space on a small scale before building it out. It seems they've developed additional confidence that a) customers will buy their groceries online if they can trust the quality and service and b) Amazon Fresh can uphold the quality and service to retain that trust.

Having dabbled with Safeway.com for our groceries a year or two ago, I knew what I didn't like, and was very happy to see those issues were not present with Amazon Fresh.

Safeway.com let you order anything in their catalog, but you wouldn't know if you'd get everything until it showed up. So you might be planning to bake muffins, and order baking powder, only to find they didn't have any after all when the delivery guy shows up. They try to correct for this total lack of inventory management by letting you set up 'replacement' options - but those are equally flawed. I once ordered Ground Mustard from Safeway.com, and set my options so that they could bring the same product in a different size, or a different brand of the same product, if they were out of the exact item I ordered. They brought me a jar of Ground Ginger. How's that for quality and service? It's like going to the grocery store with your shopping list, putting everything in your cart, and then finding out you're missing a bag when you get home - so you have to go back to the store. With Safeway.com, we found ourselves going to the store every week, anyway, to get all the things we ordered but didn't get. We also kept finding things we didn't order inside our delivery.

By contrast, Amazon Fresh seems to be built on the same inventory management system that Amazon.com has, which gives customers complete transparency about what is and is not in inventory, so I can be confident that if I order Ground Mustard, I'm going to get Ground Mustard.

The selection is also amazing - like numerous types of bananas (ripe, unripe, organic, large, small, Mexican, Equadorian), for example. The depth of the catalog really surprised me, actually. I found products I've never seen on store shelves anywhere in Seattle, like pure passion fruit pulp (which I'll be using a LOT in the future, given it's just $1.99).

And the information on each product is also great - with origin information for produce, so you know if you're buying a banana from Mexico or Equador. The full nutritional info is there online, and you can even use things like 'High Fructose Corn Syrup Free' or 'Wheat Free' to filter down your product searches.

The delivery options are also amazing. We ordered groceries late Friday night, and they were on our doorstep when I woke up at 5:30am this morning (with a headache). Unless we have alcohol in our order, we don't even have to sign for anything or be disturbed. They just leave temperature controlled crates on our doorstep, sealed with easy to remove zip ties to prevent tampering, and we bring them in when we get up.

If our first order is representative, the produce is wonderful. Each area of the Amazon Fresh warehouse (from what I understand) is managed by an expert - so it's like you're produce is being picked out by an expert in produce, your meat is being picked out for you by a meat expert, etc. I definitely don't get that service at a grocery store.



Since our weekly meal planning always produces two shopping lists - one for items we can get at the Farmers Market, and one for items we can't - we can now order our non-market groceries Friday night, find them on our doorstep when we wake up Saturday, and put them away before heading to the Farmers Market for everything else.

One big concern is whether choosing to use Amazon Fresh will be a step backward for us in terms of sustainability. I was pleased to see that they carry a lot of locally produced items, and feature them prominently. They also allow you to pick your delivery time, and let you know what times they'll already have a truck in your neighborhood - so you can cut petroleum use by 'buddying up' with a neighbor, virtually speaking, by picking that same time. It just so happened that pre-dawn delivery this morning was popular in our 'hood, so our order came to Beacon Hill with other orders to be delivered to the area - better than all of us driving our cars individually to the supermarket. They give you the option of whether you want items bagged or not (though some items still come bagged, despite selecing 'not') - and encourage you to put the bags back in the totes, so they'll get picked up and reused. The origin information for produce and even some meats makes choosing items that traveled less to get to me easier than at the grocery store (though of course, not as easy as the Farmers Market).



Delivery is $5 if you order less than $150, and there's a $30 minimum order. Prime memberships from Amazon.com don't help out on the shipping costs (nor does working for Amazon.com). There is, however, a program where they'll waive the delivery charge for a month if (in the prior month) you spent over a certain threshold that suggests you're doing the bulk of your shopping on Amazon Fresh.

But for a limited time, you can score a load of free stuff if you plug in the promotion code BREAKFAST4U at checkout! Eggs, flowers, cereal, coffee... and pancake batter in a spray can (seriously), all for free with your first order!

Wondering if Amazon Fresh delivers to your house or apartment yet? Type your address in at https://fresh.amazon.com/checkAddress? and they'll let you know.