Fresh outta the oven & straight into your home (or roundabout that day)!
Friends, Indians, countrymen! Imagine a day, in the near future, when you have a sudden craving to eat pav bhaji from Sardar Pav Bhaji or the omnipresent Shiv Sagar / Udipi. Rather than ring them up and call for it, what if you simply had to order it .. on Amazon …?! Ladies and Gentlemen, Amazon Inc. just crawled a step further towards the same via Amazon Fresh
Amazon Fresh, a subsidiary of the American behemoth Amazon.com, began its maiden offerings to the residents of its hometown -Seattle, USA – in 2007, Since then, they have managed to expand to various sects of Los Angeles and San Francisco as well. This was till a few days back when Amazon decided to push its boundaries a bit – and expand to THE NYC! Well, Brooklyn to be precise.
In keeping with their claim of selling everything from A – to – Z (also demonstrated by the arrow from A to Z in the Amazon logo), Amazon Fresh promises its customers a chance to avail of fresh and beautiful local produce, grocery & eatables before the day is out or early the next morning. The following is one of Amazon’s welcome messages for it’s latest induction –
The green li’l truck is quite ubiquitous in the cities of Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles as a heralder of fresh produce. Whilst they initially ventured out with a “no minimum order” mantra, Amazon seems to have backtracked a bit in order to ensure its operating losses do not snowball into a huge mess. Thus, Amazon Fresh now promises to deliver the goods for free only if the order is for US $ 35 or more whilst charging a delivery charge if under the aforementioned amount. While it may seem a bit much for the average Joe, Amazon is proffering same day delivery if the produce is ordered before 10 am and early next morning, if ordered before 10 pm that day. Though Amazon appears to be offering these novel services only to Amazon Prime Members (since they are eligible for 2-day free delivery) for no extra charge currently, one will have to shell out a steep US $299 for the “Prime Fresh” subscription.
In Brooklyn, Amazon will face fierce competition from firmly rooted and established players like FreshDirect and startups like Instacart. Having said that, Amazon is one of the few companies which has actually managed to prove detractors and critics wrong, time and again. Furthermore, the use of their par excellent Amazon Logistic Services will ensure they bring that much needed “chutzpah” or zing in the food as well as the fight.
Here’s hoping that Amazon succeeds in this venture too and actually brings it to our shores as well. Am sure it will be a pleasure to see Amazon go head-to-head with budding behemoths like Big Basket and Local Banya.
What are your thoughts and opinions on the same ? Do let us know below!