Amazon.com Inc. is trying a taste of restaurant food delivery in Seattle via its Amazon Prime Now app.
North America’s largest e-retailer announced this week that it will deliver food from dozens of Seattle restaurants, including Cactus, Wild Ginger, Skillet, Marination Station, Republic, Café Yumm!, Ten Mercer and Mamnoon, says Gus Lopez, general manager, Amazon Restaurants. Amazon plans to add more restaurants in the coming weeks, Lopez adds.
Amazon Prime is Amazon’s membership program. Consumers pay $99 a year for free two-day shipping and other perks, such as free streaming of TV shows and movies that Amazon has licensed. Members can receive one-hour shipping for $7.99 through the Prime Now mobile app. Food delivery from restaurants, however, is free.
To use the service, consumers download the Prime Now app and enter their ZIP code to see if restaurant delivery is available in their area. Consumers in some Seattle ZIP codes will see a list of restaurants on the app’s home page that they can choose from. Consumers choose the food items in the app, and pay with their saved Amazon account information. Once an order is placed, Amazon delivery drivers pick up and deliver the food within an hour.
For some of the restaurants, this is the first time they are offering delivery, Amazon says. The menu items are not marked up, nor are there service or delivery fees, Amazon says.
“For now it’s free. We don’t have any specific plans to add a delivery fee at this time,” Lopez says.
There is no fee for restaurants to be a part of the service, although Amazon does get a cut of the revenue sharing model, says Lopez, who did not give further details.
Restaurant Wild Ginger, is happy to team up with Amazon, since customers know and trust that brand, says Scott Campbell, director of operations at Wild Ginger.
Amazon is focused only on Seattle for now, but plans to grow the service, says Lopez, who did not comment further.