E-commerce giant Amazon is expanding its online to offline footprint today with the debut of restaurant delivery in Seattle.
Amazon (AMZN) said Tuesday that Seattle customers of its subscription program, Prime Now, can access food delivery from a number of local restaurants including Cactus, Wild Ginger, Skillet, Marination Station, Re:public, Café Yumm!, Ten Mercer, Mamnoon and others.
When users open the Prime Now mobile app, they will see menus of restaurants, can place an orders and track the status of their delivery. Once an order is placed, Amazon promises that drivers will pick up and deliver the food within an hour or less.
Amazon Prime costs $99 per year, and includes free two-day shipping on more than 20 million items on Amazon’s marketplace, same-day delivery on some items, and access to streamed songs, movies and TV shows.
The company says that there are no menu markups or service fees. It’s unclear, however, if customers are able to tip drivers for the delivery through the app.
Delivery on all orders is free for a limited time, but one could assume that Amazon will start requiring customers to pay a fee at some point. The beauty of integrating restaurant delivery into the Amazon app is that customers already have their shipping, billing and credit card information uploaded, so there’s not much extra effort required in starting to use the delivery service.
While Amazon didn’t release any expansion plans for other regions, the company could be eyeing New York City as its next delivery location, according to a recent Reuters report.
It’s not particularly surprising that Amazon is moving into food delivery. The Seattle-based company has offered grocery delivery for some time, and could leverage its existing logistics network to deliver food to consumers. Of course, it’s worth noting that Amazon will go head to head with a number of existing restaurant delivery services including GrubHub (GRUB).
For more on Amazon’s food delivery ambitions, watch this video.
