Reports suggest that Amazon will be rolling out super fast grocery delivery in the UK after their initial preparations to launch a Grocery service were stalled when Coronavirus hit. This grocery service is expected to offer fresh food to a larger number of national postcodes than the London limited Amazon Fresh whilst remaining under the Amazon Fresh and Amazon Prime Now Brands. They are expected to separate the service into its own brand in the future, but for now, we imagine keeping it in a familiar place will help it grow and give Amazon time to realize their true plans for the future of their online grocery offerings in the UK.
There is evidence of multiple depots emerging to help them with fulfilling the fresh food orders including a new refrigerated distribution center, built in Greater London as a hub for fresh produce. Amazon have also told suppliers that they are adapting their platform to deal with grocery delivery orders and that customers can purchase weekly baskets with options for one to two-hour delivery slots in a limited number of cities in the UK.
In fairness to Amazon, if this new service had been released before the COVID-19 crisis they would have most likely been left under intense stress as most offering online groceries were, they even experienced this with Amazon Pantry. They also felt the strain in their fulfillment capacity but have since managed to create new warehouse and delivery jobs as well as put in place rigorous safety measures and new technology to help combat the spread of the virus. Launching their Grocery service in the very near future will help them adapt to the new future of online commerce, under less pressure, being more prepared whilst meeting the needs of a much larger amount of consumers who will now be shopping online.
3 Responses
They will need lots of refrigerated delivery vans then and they are not cheap and have lots of issues, all our lot have been doing is putting old fleet vans back into action and they are bangers, like driving tanks about.
You also cannot do 100 drops a day as shopping tends to be heavy and in bulk, I delivered 16 heavy crates to one house last night and it is backbreaking
Plus they would have to drastically improve their product lines to get the weekly shop and be prepared to deliver to the sticks as that is where the big orders come from not the cities.
The place I drive for has more than quadrupled their orders in the last 3 months, and with the lockdown more or less ending it is still not getting any less.
It was probably wise of them to put a stop when they did as it was a logistics nightmare from supply, picking, loading, delivering and stil is.
Amazon with their logistics expertise, money and IT (we still do not get decent sat navs) could easily dominate this market very quickly.
Best of luck to them, the competition will be welcomed but I don’t think it’s transformative. I’m happy as a consumer with the click and collect service I use from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Waitrose: all free with a minimum spend or free enough to find it worth doing. Love prime as a consumer, but the only edge it has for me is amazon locker. Between click and collect and Costco in the UK I’m not waiting with baited breath for the roll out of this.