Amazon has announced that from Tuesday, July 28, it will be offering its grocery delivery service for free to Prime members, starting in London and the South East and expanding to further across the UK by the end of 2020.
The move comes as leading UK supermarkets have expanded their online delivery services due to increased e-commerce demand during the coronavirus crisis. Tesco, for example, has more than doubled the availability of delivery slots to 1.3m a week and has seen online grow to 16% of its total UK sales from 9% previously. while Waitrose has seen its online orders more than double this year so far and has responded by expanding fulfilment and delivery from stores and opening new fulfilment centres in London.
Prime members will be able to use the Amazon Fresh service without paying additional delivery fees on orders over £40. Delivery is promised in a two-hour window and is available same-day when orders are placed before 9 pm. At the same time, the minimum order threshold has been reduced to £15 from £40.
Prime members in 300 postcodes in London and the South East, including Surrey, Hampshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, will be able to order food, household essentials and general groceries from brands including Booths, Whole Foods Market, Pepsi and Danone and specialist producers including Gail’s Artisan baker, C. Lidgate and Paxton & Whitfield.
The retailer has been selling groceries in the UK since it launched its Grocery Store in 2010 and followed that up with Amazon Fresh in 2016, offering until now, same-day groceries for an additional fee.
Source: Internet Retailing
