Amazon Begins UK Food Shopping Delivery

Amazon has begun trialling its grocery delivery service in the UK for the first time, ahead of a wider rollout expected later this year.

The online retail giant has reportedly begun a trial of its AmazonFresh service to selected customers in Birmingham this week, according to Retail Week.

The service offers a choice of around 50 chilled products, as the company gears up for a UK-wide launch of AmazonFresh later this year, with London expected to be confirmed as a further expansion location within the next few weeks.

Fresh

To support the launch, Amazon has apparently leased a 257,855 sq ft warehouse in Leicestershire and an even bigger 304,751 sq ft site in London, the report says.

Deliveries are scheduled via the Prime Now app, which launched in the UK back in July, offering speedy delivery within the hour for more than 10,000 items to Amazon Prime members.

Amazon introduced its same-day service in the US last year, and Retail Week reports that if everything goes to plan, AmazonFresh will fully launch “in February or March” next year, putting traditional supermarkets on immediate notice.

The launch is Amazon’s latest expansion into the ecommerce market as it looks to stay top of the pile in what is becoming an increasingly crowded space.

Earlier this year, it was claimed that the company was planning to launch a new service that will employ normal people to courier goods. The “On My Way” program would offer ordinary people payment to drop off packages on their way home from work or school, with users able to sign up via a dedicated mobile app.

The company has also revealed it aims to move into drone delivery for its items, a program it hopes to launch within the next few years.

More details about its Prime Air scheme were revealed earlier this years, showing that the drones involved will be able to talk to each other to share information and update their routes in real time, determining if their flight paths and proposed landing areas are safe and free of obstacles (like people or dogs).

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