Amazon announced today that its Prime Now service will now start delivering goods from local stores in Manhattan, with plans to expand soon to other communities later this year.
People living in certain Manhattan zip codes can now buy things like groceries and prepared meals from places like D’Agostino, Gourmet Garage and Billy’s Bakery by using Amazon’s Prime Now app. Amazon will then scoop up these items and deliver them, in addition to continuing to offer one-hour delivery of the usual goods offered from its online catalog.
The move to provide logistics and delivery for third-party, brick-and-mortar businesses marks a new step for Amazon as it seeks to leverage the massive infrastructure it’s building to enable Amazon Prime.
“Our Prime Now hub in Manhattan is home to tens of thousands of products that are being delivered to customers in an hour or less,” said Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, in a statement.
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The expanded Prime Now delivery service also creates an interesting dynamic where Amazon eventually may be bumping up against companies like Uber, which is attempting to use its drivers’ network to deliver things like meals in a handful of communities.
The promise for local-store delivery is under two hours. So far, Prime Now has been launched in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Dallas, Manhattan, and Miami. Amazon says it’s working to add third-party delivery to those cities as well.
