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Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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 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.

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