Amazon-Whole Foods Partnership to Offer Two-Hour Grocery Delivery

Many people strongly prefer to go to a brick-and-mortar grocery store and pick out their foods themselves. Often, they have preferences on the level of ripeness they're looking for. Others worry that anything picked out by someone else may be dented or bruised or otherwise rendered unusable. On the other hand, there are many shoppers, especially of younger, more tech-savvy generation, who would prefer the efficiency and time-saving of ordering groceries online. Well, according to a recent L.A. Times article, the Amazon-Whole Foods partnership may make that a commonplace reality for the latter demographic.

This year, Amazon is planning to add two-hour Whole Foods grocery deliveries as another benefit for Prime customers. While some Prime customers have already experienced similar benefits through Amazon Fresh, this is different in that Prime customers only have to pay $99 per year versus the $299 per year cost of Amazon Fresh. Additionally, the Whole Foods service delivers within two hours, while Amazon Fresh deliveries often have to be scheduled for the next day. However, the Whole Foods Prime option will likely have a much more limited selection than that offered on Amazon Fresh, so there is a trade-off involved.

Many potential shoppers consider Whole Food's groceries to be of high quality and therefore doubt that they will have any problems with the service, even though they aren't picking out and handling the foods themselves. Others, who have their doubts about smashed cookies or bruised fruit would prefer to shop online, then pick up in the store, thereby saving some time while still ensuring better quality. Currently, about 7% of households in the United States purchase groceries online, with most of those opting to have the groceries shipped. This new deal through Amazon Prime may drive those numbers even higher.

Amazon isn't the only company looking into the only grocery-shopping business. WalMart has developed a system whereby shoppers can order groceries ahead of time and just come into the store to pick them up. Kroger, the company that owns some grocery stores, including Ralph's and Smith's, has offered in-store pickup and is testing out delivery options. Target recently bought grocery-delivery company Shipt, and Whole Foods has even been delivering products through a company called Instacart. Amazon Prime's move is just increasing the prevalence, and will likely lead to a greater number of people ordering groceries from home.

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Grocery Delivery: Niche or Mainstream?

Going shopping can be both inconvenient and time-consuming for the average person. People like to save time and money so you might think that a technological innovation to make grocery shopping more convenient might attract a lot of interest. According to David Pierson's L.A. Times article, that might not be the case after all.

Amazon recently put in a $13.7 billion bid to acquire Whole Foods Inc., including all of its stores, warehouses, and distribution centers. Although Amazon already has a service called AmazonFresh, which allows customers to order fruits, vegetables, and other perishable food products to be delivered on the same day, this acquisition seems to show that Amazon is looking to gain greater traction in the grocery-delivery market. But, the question still remains: will grocery delivery be a successful venture in the years to come?

During the dot-com boom of the 1990s. a company called Webvan had a goal of making grocery shopping a thing of the past. They planned to do what Amazon is attempting to do: make grocery delivery mainstream. Unfortunately for Webvan, even after $800 million in funding, they were ultimately forced to declare bankruptcy nearly 20 years ago. They realized too late that, at the time, grocery delivery was both incredibly costly and extremely risky because it takes a certain kind of customer to let someone else pick out their groceries for them.

Research has shown that people have some innate preference for picking out their groceries themselves. They want to be able to look at each and every piece of fruit before purchasing it, making sure that it's unbruised or the right level of ripeness. Consumers don't trust that an employee of AmazonFresh or another similar company will be able to do as good a job as them when picking out their groceries. Especially if they end up paying the same amount for the delivered groceries as for those purchased in the store, customers will not sacrifice quality for a little bit of convenience.

However, if the convenience factor was there and the prices were reduced, studies show that the combination might be enough to convince some customers to try out grocery delivery. People care about the price more than anything else. That's why discount grocery stores like Aldi have been expanding so quickly in recent years. Even if the quality of the food is not phenomenal, the lower prices bring customers in faster than at any other chain. So, although many people in this day and age want organic fruits and vegetables, few of them purchase their organic foods at Whole Foods, because the chain is known to have high prices. If Amazon somehow found a way to reduce the prices and deliver the food, all while still making a profit, their goal might be achieved in the near future.

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Find out more about us at www.sepulvedaescrow.net. Any Questions? Contact our Escrow Expert! Sepulveda Escrow Corporation (818) 838-1831. Follow our company on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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