Introducing Amazon Fresh | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Amazon Fresh

fresh.amazon.com

36 pointsanfedorov46 comments

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).

Someday a Trader Joes will come to Lake City (or any grocery store other than Fred Meyer) but until then, Lesser Seattle[0] appreciates Amazon Fresh. I didn't see where the $299/$220 comes from. When I go to the link, it just takes me to the "buy things and sign in" page after I click Seattle. It looks like the Amazon Fresh Prime offering is only available in Los Angeles.

0 - It's a joke. North of 85th and south of SODO isn't considered "actual Seattle" by a lot of folks, mostly by the new arrivals who only go to SLU, Capitol Hill, and Ballard.

Isn't there a QFC on Lake City Way? There's also a nice new Safeway on 125th and 15th (though not technically Lake City, I think).

On another note... never thought I'd see talk about Lake City on HN :)

I saw an Amazon FTE badge in Lake City about two weeks ago, so I'd get ready for lots more Lake City talk on HN... :D

The only grocery store on LCW is Fred Meyer (part of the Kroger family of stores, which also includes QFC) and it's the only walkable one--outside of Grocery Outlet which barely counts as a grocery store--in the neighborhood. Amazon Fresh is the only way to get Whole Foods/Trader Joe's-style offerings without two buses. The new Safeway is at least on route 41 which is nice for quick runs.

You can also get to the QFC on Northgate on the 75.

Ah bummer, looks like the QFC on Lake City Way closed a couple years ago... it'd been there forever! Looks like the one on 145th and 15th is still there though (but obviously that's not easily walkable from Lake City Way).

Good to see the neighborhood is perhaps up and coming?

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.

They're not competing with Zipcar; they're competing with existing grocery store delivery services like Peapod, FreshDirect, Safeway Delivery, etc.

Ultimately, they are competing with brick and mortar grocery shopping.

I can generally make the entire trip in just under an hour (sample size: two out of three), but I'm blessed with twin advantages of being unusually efficient in Trader Joe's and having a ZipCar lot literally across the street from my building.

Shouldn't this calculation include time cost? Clearly that's where the value lies. Do you pay yourself $0 per hour? Of course not.

This assumes the groceries are the same price. Unfortunately, Amazon Fresh prices are likely higher (for now). I did some price comparison with Safeway after placing a Fresh order sometime in 2012. Amazon prices were higher on every item except one. In some cases, Amazon was nearly twice as expensive.

I saw ads for stop & shop's "peapod" service on the T: 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)

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.)

I'd be really interested to see this in Boston as well. I can walk to grocery stores easily, but for heavy/bulk items like drinks and chips, I'd much rather pay to have them delivered. I already have iced tea delivered from Amazon, but the selection is just okay.

You don't want to drive to that Trader Joe's. They have the worst parking garage I've ever seen. It's really difficult to get into and out of without hitting a post or another car. Since the parking garage is above the grocery store you have to drive up a steep ramp to park. And I've seen shopping carts accidentally rolling down that ramp more than once.

Also, I don't know if I'd say Trader Joe's is much better than the stuff you can find on Amazon. They're about equivalent in terms of quality. I'd say that the biggest benefit of your solution is that you get to pick out your own produce.

Do you recommend the Lower Queen Anne one?

And I prefer TJ's frozen food (I am an absolute sucker for the Mac and Cheese) and produce. I agree that the quality of staples are more or less equivalent.

The one on Queen Anne (upper, there isn't one in lower) is nice but pretty small. They are moving to the old Met Market location next year which will be a lot bigger.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions about who their target demographic is. Maybe it's not the guy who has time to run to the store in the afternoon, but the mom I know using Amazon Prime because taking two kids to the store is a huge time-consuming pain. My company also used AmPrime to order snacks rather than using our exclusively skilled staff to run errands.

It might not be right for everyone, but for those who have lots of money and little time it's a great service.

Yes, and I think $299 price tag would be more compelling if products had better pricing.

I do my shopping at Shop Rite and A&P, and I find Amazon's price 20-50% more expensive on most of the items I buy.

It may be because I create shopping list around what's on sale, but I'm by no means a crazy couple clipper. I assume other people do the same.

My $500/month grocery bill can easily turn into $700/month, which adds up to $2000+ in added cost per year.

If Amazon offered lowered product price, coupon-sales, and charge reasonable service fee rather than annual fee, I would use this service, because grocery shopping isn't exactly fun for me.

It seems like most of the grocery delivery services fail, because they're too aggressive with product markups to make up for 'free' shipping.

I agree with this premise about pricing.

I'm also a target customer and in fact I tried out Amazon Fresh.

I am mid 20's, upper-middle-class, living in Santa Monica(Fresh delivers here) and I chose to not keep the membership at $220 because it was too steep.

The service itself is awesome and I thought maybe the best part is that when they delivered refrigerated food they used frozen water bottles and encouraged us to keep those waters even though we had not ordered them because it was less trouble for them to collect them every time.

Overall I was pleased with the service itself, however at $220/year its a bit more than I can justify for strictly a convenience fee.

I've been a prime member since 2010 and order almost everything off of Amazon, but I'm all to happy to walk/drive to the grocery store to pay the same prices or slightly less than Amazon Fresh.

Also even though I now live in Santa Monica I still have two cars which is probably abnormal, that said even if I did not have a vehicle (I RARELY drive here) I could not see myself finding the $220 per year "worth" it to me

I feel the target demographic is dads or moms with 2-3 kids who just don't have the time. My boss specifically signed up for this reason.

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.

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.

Interesting. Does this have anything to do with the fact that distances are larger in the US and a large percentage of the population rely on their own cars rather than public transport?

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.

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/

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.

You may wanna try Good Eggs: http://www.goodeggs.com/welcome

You may want to try Luke's Local http://lukeslocal.com

There one a Amazon Fresh Truck in my street (Russian Hill) last night. They're coming.

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.

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.

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.

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.

$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.

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-...

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). It was amazing to have groceries delivered to my front steps in the winter time after we had a baby.

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

Came for world changing technology.

Got vegetables.

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

Way more excited about this than drones!

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