Amazon.com Inc. is getting into the restaurant takeout and delivery business.

The No. 1 e-retailer in North America, according to the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, has launched a service in Seattle that enables online shoppers to place food orders from local eateries. Consumers can access the service—which doesn’t seem to have a formal name beyond “Takeout & Delivery”—via the Amazon Local app and web site. Amazon Local offers shoppers deals for local goods and services.

Amazon provided no immediate comment on the service, which appears to apply now only to consumers in the Seattle area.

The online ordering effort would appear to be similar to what such e-commerce operators as GrubHub and Seamless offer. A search today for food orders available in the 98104 ZIP Code, an area that includes part of downtown Seattle, turned up 139 restaurants from which consumers could order food from Amazon. Of those, 20 restaurants would deliver food ordered through Amazon. A search in the same ZIP code on GrubHub.com turned up 105 restaurants for pickup or delivery. 45 of those were restaurants that would deliver food ordered from Grub Hub.

For its part, GrubHub would not comment specifically on the Amazon move, though a spokeswoman offered a general comment of confidence. “Nobody is doing what we do, at our scale,” she says. “We connect millions of hungry diners to more than 30,000 restaurants in 800+ cities across the country and in London, and we process more than 172,000 orders via our online and mobile ordering platforms each day.”

Amazon Local launched its daily deal service in 2011 in the United States and in 2012 in the United Kingdom. Amazon invested $175 million in daily deal aggregator LivingSocial Inc., No. 155 in the Top 500 Guide, and now owns 31% of the company. Amazon subsequently wrote off part of its investment amid steep losses at LivingSocial and, as of Sept. 30, Amazon reported a book value for LivingSocial of $84 million, according to Amazon’s third quarter financial report. LivingSocial’s net income for the first nine months of 2014 stands at $131 million, compared with a net loss of $104 million for the same period last year. In January, LivingSocial sold its Korean operations and the $205 million gain booked by Amazon, net of tax, has been “partially offset by operating losses” by LivingSocial.