
Introducing Amazon Fresh - anfedorov
http://fresh.amazon.com/MembershipBenefits
======
jmduke
Amazon Fresh isn't new -- it's been around in Seattle since 2007. What appears
to be new is the Prime Fresh offering as a new gating mechanism for it: $299
per annum (effectively $220 if you're already a Prime customer), which also
cuts away the delivery cost.

At first blush, I'm not sure if the value proposition is attractive enough for
me, even though I'm more or less the target demographic (upper-middle-class,
20's, who lives alone, without car). $200/year is not an insignificant amount
of money: I can get a ZipCar for an hour for $10, and hop over to the Trader
Joe's at Capitol Hill and get cheaper, higher quality food.

The big thing here is the time savings (which is valid: ordering off of Fresh
is just as easy as ordering off of Amazon itself).

~~~
benesch
Back of the napkin calculations put the cost of Prime Fresh at less than the
cost of Zipcar grocery shopping.

Realistically, you can't drive to the grocery store, do your shopping, drive
home, unload the car, and drive the Zipcar back to its parking spot in
anything less than two hours. (And maybe fill it up with gas, if you're
unlucky.) Even with a cheap Zipcar, that's $16 + tax per trip.

$220/$17 puts the equivalency at 13 trips a year. So, Prime is cheaper if you
grocery shop more than about once a month. I certainly do.

If they bring this to Boston, I'm in.

~~~
rb2k_
I saw ads for stop & shop's "peapod" service on the T:
[http://www.peapod.com/](http://www.peapod.com/) .

Haven't used them myself though.

(and the ad said that you can use T2013 as a coupon code and get ?15$? off
your first order)

~~~
ghaff
My experience with Peapod is a few years back when I had a broken foot and was
on crutches. It was great for me in those circumstances. I could order from a
(somewhat limited) set of things and they would (mostly) arrive at the
scheduled time. Going to the store to pick up the odd item wasn't that big a
deal but doing a full grocery shopping was difficult.

Now, if I could reliably do a full grocery shopping with all the ordered items
delivered from a good selection I might be tempted. But probably wouldn't pay
the necessary fee as the grocery store is 4 miles down the road from my house
and I have a car. (Also I imagine I'm too far out of the city to get the
service anyway.)

------
xexers
Grocery delivery in the UK is amazing! I wish it was like this everywhere. All
the major chains have professional websites, nice trucks, cheap service.
Delivery prices range from about £3.00 to £6.00 depending on the time of day.

Sadly, I'm moving to Canada where grocery delivery is nearly non existent. I
hope amazon solves my problems there.

~~~
sim0n
Yeah, when I lived in the UK I often used major chain's delivery services
(Tesco, Sainsburys, Ocado, etc) when I couldn't get to a store. Safeway has a
pretty good delivery service in the US for next day grocery deliveries (pretty
much as good as in the UK - apart from the website, which is pretty terrible).

Though, one of the perks of living in the Bay Area is Instacart. Instacart is
100x better than the UK delivery services since they offer same day delivery
that generally arrives within 2 hours (and then there's Postmates if you need
things within 1 hour). They also have a subscription model like Amazon Prime
Fresh where if you pay $99 a year you get free delivery for orders over $35
which is super useful.

------
staunch
Already have Prime. No way I'm paying another $220/yr. Another $80/yr would be
pushing it. But my neighbors in LA certainly do seem to be adopting it
quickly, and it's helping me because a Fresh truck delivered one of my
packages recently.

------
eshvk
I experimented with a few options here in SF for groceries. I tried Instacart;
it works out to be slightly more expensive than be taking an uber back and
forth to the closest TJs and buying stuff. The best of the bunch now appears
to Walmart to go[1]. They have a minimum delivery of $35 but stuff appears to
be reasonable (assuming you don't have personal objections to walmart). The
site is kind of shitty though.

I would probably go the Amazon route if they released fresh here and made it
cheaper to get a membership. I use Amazon for almost everything else.

[1] [http://delivery.walmart.com/](http://delivery.walmart.com/)

------
nivals
I cannot wait for this to launch in San Francisco.

Depending on your location in the city, grocery shopping without a car can be
a pain if you're buying enough food/organic produce/grass-fed meat for 21
meals/week x 2 people.

Add the cost of ~1.0-1.5 hours of a ZipCar on top of the 'organic premium' and
a delivery service makes sense.

In NYC, FreshDirect was worth the delivery cost. They charged per delivery
rather than a subscription. Their food quality, variety, consistency, time-
savings, and organic options always exceeded my expectations and made it
worthwhile.

I'll pay the fee on top of my Prime membership for this in San Francisco.

~~~
DanielRibeiro
You may wanna try Good Eggs:
[http://www.goodeggs.com/welcome](http://www.goodeggs.com/welcome)

------
9999
I used the free trial in LA for a while. I placed quite a few orders in the
two months that I used it, but ultimately decided to cancel it before I had to
pay the additional $220.

The selection was somewhat mediocre compared to what you would find in a real
grocery store. The quality of produce was good, while the quality of the meat
was mediocre. The selection of wine and beer was abysmal (wine and beer were
made available through a third party, but they seemed to have a very limited
selection). The pricing was also considerably higher than what you would find
at a supermarket and just slightly lower than Whole Foods (while the quality
was not nearly as good...). They seemed unable to meet the demand for certain
items (La Brea bakery bread for example), and in two separate orders they just
didn't send some items.

I realized with the first order that you really need to do the in person
delivery since you'll be stuck with a bunch of giant box/bag things full of
frozen water bottles cluttering up your residence unless you return them to
the delivery person. They encourage you to tip the delivery person as well,
which I find annoying. If I'm already paying $220 for this additional service,
why don't Amazon pay them a decent wage? In the end, I just don't order enough
groceries to justify the $220 a year it costs.

------
Patrick_Devine
How does Amazon Fresh compare to Webvan of old? For me, Webvan was kind of
cool (I still have a green plastic box), but it was kind of a pain in the ass.
The main points against it, in my book, were:

\- It's hard to keep track of recurring purchases. If I haven't finished
something, I don't (necessarily) want more of it piling up. That, and I'm lazy
and will get annoyed if this is happening with more than a couple of items. \-
Deliveries had to be scheduled days in advance. Often I just need a couple of
things to finish a meal, and I'd rather buy those and have them delivered in
an hour. When I make a grocery list, it's often just-in-time when I go to the
supermarket. I know what I'm missing _right now_. It's a lot more difficult to
predict what will be missing 3-4 days from now. \- The interface for finding
things was a pain in the ass. Presumably Amazon can fix this, but their
interface isn't exactly stellar. It's easy to find a three-four things
relatively quickly, but the loiter time I spend on each product is probably
5-10 minutes because of comparison shopping. This isn't how I approach buying
things at a supermarket where I usually know the location of something because
it's always in the same spot.

------
danhorner
We've been using fresh in Seattle for a couple years. They've always had free
delivery with a minimum order (it's crept up to about $100). The big "secret"
is that they will deliver many prime-eligible amazon.com items. So it's pretty
easy to hit the minimum if you throw in a couple of books or a hard drive.

------
Guest9821
Well, this isn't in my area, but I'd be all over it. First off, I live in a
city center, and I'm single. I walk to the grocery store and carry everything
I buy, so I typically go twice a week and spend about $50 each time. It takes
about 45min to walk to the store, shop, walk back, and unload groceries.

If this is $300/yr, that means I have to decide between going to the store
myself, or paying $2.88 for amazon to deliver my groceries every few days.
$2.88 to avoid putting on pants, interrupting my workflow, walking to and from
the store, and waiting in line. That seems like a deal I'd take.

Then again, when I go to the grocery store, I usually walk to the bakery,
market, etc. Plus, being forced to leave the house, wear pants, and interact
with human beings has some advantages. Sometimes I get too comfortable being
at home, and the fear of starvation is good motivation to get fresh air.

------
gergles
$300 a year for the privilege of being able to shop with them? And there's
still a $35 minimum order for 'free' delivery? WTF.

This has got to be the worst value prop I've ever seen -- online grocery
delivery services are way cheaper than that, even if you make a shitload of
orders. The one I use costs $7 a run for under $100 or $3 for over $100. Even
if you make an order every other week that's under $100, you're still at just
over half the price Amazon is charging.

------
dmazin
This was around already. The relevant news story is that this service may be
announced for San Francisco next week: [http://allthingsd.com/20131205/online-
retail-giants-grocery-...](http://allthingsd.com/20131205/online-retail-
giants-grocery-delivery-service-amazonfresh-may-launch-in-san-francisco-next-
week/)

------
pwenzel
Grocery delivery is fantastic when you need it, even if it costs a little more
than driving out and doing it yourself.

In the Twin Cities area we have Coborns Delivers
([http://www.cobornsdelivers.com](http://www.cobornsdelivers.com)). It was
amazing to have groceries delivered to my front steps in the winter time after
we had a baby.

------
bhauer
Has anything changed with Fresh recently? Looks about the same to me.

Incidentally, my review of the LA service from a few months ago:
[http://tiamat.tsotech.com/amazon-fresh](http://tiamat.tsotech.com/amazon-
fresh)

TLDR: It's a welcome and long-anticipated return of home grocery delivery but
there is a lot of room for improvement.

~~~
Rebelgecko
It seems like they've rolled it out to more of LA. When it first came here my
address wasn't eligible, but apparently it is now (although for some reason
before it lets me proceed it shows a big warning saying that I'm not in the
Seattle delivery area)

------
jawns
Just in case you're confused -- as I was, until I started digging through the
details:

Amazon Fresh is the store.

Amazon Prime Fresh is the subscription service, a $220 add-on to Amazon Prime
(so, basically, you're paying $300 for both Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime
Fresh).

Your subscription allows you to shop at the store (Amazon Fresh), and orders
over $35 qualify for free shipping.

------
mattvv
I could stomach the $299 per year if the prices were cheap, however - cheapest
avacado I could find was for $1.29 per avacado.... that's a lot more expensive
then the 48c special at sprouts.... especially when you factor in the cost of
membership.

------
codex
This would be more attractive if Amazon Fresh weren't completely unreliable--
it's often out of stock of the products I want. I must throw my recipie plan
in the trash on a regular basis. Whole Foods or PCC it is most definitely not.

------
audiodude
Came for world changing technology.

Got vegetables.

------
robbiet480
After reading Brad Stone's book I winner if this is the first shot across the
bow against Instacart, PeaPod et al. A race to the bottom

------
ferrantim
Way more excited about this than drones!

