Anyone using Amazon Fresh?

[Ego]

Three Sunday evenings in a row the USPS has pulled up in front of our building and unloaded a delivery from Amazon Fresh to one of my tenants.

Today I decided to look at the prices and compare Amazon Fresh to what I paid recently at our local low-cost Asian market or produce market. I was surprised to find that the prices for organic vegetables (kale, collard greens, spinach, beets) were actually cheaper than my grocer. Conventional kale was 99 cents a bunch. OTOH fruits were waaaay more expensive.

Anyone here using Amazon Fresh?

[George the original one]

Nay, I'm 80 miles from any large metropolitan area.

[Ego]

Ah, I just read the fine print. You have to be a member of Amazon Fresh Prime. Annual fee, $299.

[enigmaT120]

Is that tenant car-free?

[Ego]

No, she has a car.

[Ego]

I just ran into the Amazon Fresh tenant today. I mentioned that several tenants had asked me about the service. She said yeah it only costs like $3 a week. Actually it is $5.75 a week, but who's counting. Gave me an interesting insight as to how others think about this kind of thing. It's not $299 a year, it is a few dollars a week. She said she orders once a week ($50 minimum) and said the quality of the produce is exceptional. She's picky so I believe her.

The postal service picks up and returns the packaging. I assume it gets reused. Leaving the bags in the lobby waiting for pickup... smart advertising.



I could imagine the service is useful for two-income families who have trouble finding time to get to the grocery store. Also, for those singletons who are carfree. Shifting just a few meals a week from restaurants to home would probably cover the cost.

If Amazon successfully poaches these high-end customers I wonder what's going to happen to the rest of us. They are the ones subsidizing our low-priced staples. I thought about it when I saw this article detailing how the poor pay more for most things and how the disparity is getting worse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... udy-warns/

Hum

[George the original one]

If Amazon successfully poaches these high-end customers I wonder what's going to happen to the rest of us. They are the ones subsidizing our low-priced staples. I thought about it when I saw this article detailing how the poor pay more for most things and how the disparity is getting worse.

This is always the problem of being a bottom-feeder: you can only go higher, you can't go lower. So the correct option is to change tactics to one where you aren't paying.

[jacob]

I remember the TP study coming out a couple of weeks ago. I note that the poor still spend a lot more on lottery tickets than they do on toilet paper---i.e. average lottery spending per low-income person would pay for some 80 rolls per week! So my idea was to sell lottery tickets in the form of toilet paper. Problem fixed!

Aside from comparing the cost to car ownership there's also the comparative advantage comparison if that applies. Unorganized/non-bulk buyers can/will waste a lot of time shopping; say 1 hr per week at $3 ...

[lilacorchid]

$6 a week for someone to do my grocery shopping for me a deliver it to my door is 100% worth it, especially if the produce is good. I already subscribe to many things on Amazon; mostly so I don't have to use my car to get the big heavy things at the big box places or carry large boxes home from the local places, taking up valuable space in my bags for other things we need. Bulk things are often extremely close in price to what I would find at Walmart or Superstore.

So yes, laugh if you want, but I subscribe to toilet paper, canned tomatoes, pasta, toothpaste, soap, etc. Now I don't have to battle the crowds on Saturday morning. I have my coffee, hang out with my family, and/or work on my hobbies.

(Also, Amazon Canada is terrible. You Americans and your awesome Prime. I'm jealous.)

[Forskaren]

I wonder how cheap food will be once its farmed, proccessed and delivered by robots and drones.

Isn't Amazon working on drone delivery?

[jennypenny]

If I'm reading the information correctly, Amazon Fresh is only $200 more/year if you already have Prime. That's $3.85/week. The prices are comparable to what I can get now, assuming I'm not spending oodles of time chasing down loss leaders. They also have a 30-day free trial. I think I'm going to try it.

[Ego]

Amazon Fresh added a service here allowing members to place an order from their local grocery store. They pay a picker to do the shopping, bag the items and get them ready for the postal service. The postal service (yes, USPS) picks the bags up from the grocery store and delivers them. All within two hours and included in the price of Amazon Fresh.

We know someone who got a "job" (independent contractor I believe) as an Amazon grocery store picker. She lives across the street from the grocery store. They send her shopping lists during her window of availability and she runs across, shops and hangs the bags in the pickup area. Apparently she is quite busy.

[jennypenny]

Well, that was easy enough and the order will be here this afternoon. A couple of things I needed were cheaper on the main Amazon site and I still get free prime shipping, I just have to wait until Friday for those items.

I forgot something and could easily add it to my order, which was nice. Amazon really knows how to make things convenient.

[jennypenny]

I've been sitting here waiting for my order because I'm such a nerd I have nothing better to do, but it's late. Not a good start.

[jennypenny]

It came. I ordered different types of things -- rolls, chips, milk, produce -- to see how well they would make the trip. Everything was in great shape except for one corner of the bag of chips. I ordered strawberries, cantaloupe, and an avocado to see what kind of produce they would pick, and those were fine. Except for being a little late and having to find a place to store the cooler bags until the next delivery, I'm happy with it.

[Ego]

Except for being a little late and having to find a place to store the cooler bags until the next delivery, I'm happy with it.

Our tenant leaves them for the mail carrier. They are supposed to take them back but are very good at not seeing them.

[jennypenny]

You mean the USPS? My order came on an Amazon delivery truck. Maybe it's different depending on where you live?

[Ego]

Yeah, USPS. Give it a try and see what happens.

[KevinW]

Apparently I missed this thread when it started. Anyway we tried Amazon Fresh for a year on a lark. We were satisfied but not wowed and ultimately did not renew.

The pricing is a mixed bag. It seems like Amazon consciously undercuts on the kinds of items for which people are hyper-conscious about price: milk, premium coffee, vegetarian meat substitutes, etc. So if you price check the first 3 items that come to mind, it looks really good. On average the prices are about the same as our local upscale supermarket, or 10% higher than our local no-frills supermarket. They only carry organic or butcher shop meat, so meat was WAY more expensive than I'm used to. Grains and flours only come in 1-3 lb packages, so the unit price is OK but not great compared to 10-25 lb sacks. Produce was surprisingly high quality.

Their fulfillment was mediocre. About half the time the online shopping and delivery were a delight. The other half there was some kind of annoying snag. Often their delivery slots would get booked up several days into the future, especially around holidays. They frequently sold out of must-haves like eggs and butter. We even had items disappear out of our cart, without notice, because they sold out in the midst of our checkout. Annoying! I surmise they are training some machine learning algorithm on how to minimize inventory, which is OK in principle, but it's aggravating to have to pay for the privilege of being a false-negative data point.

Obviously, delivery is a huge time saver compared to doing your own shopping. We used the Fresh cart instead of a separate shopping list, which saves a little additional time.

The online ordering process makes it a lot easier to maintain "list discipline" and avoid impulse purchases.

The $299/year price is significant, but as noted, it includes Prime, and is offset by the fact that you aren't paying to travel to the grocery store any more. If grocery shopping were the one thing blocking you from going car-free, this would be a huge win.

All-in, I wager this is cheaper than what most of my acquaintances seem to do, which is to visit an upscale supermarket 1-2 times on a whim with no advance planning. It's maybe 10-20% more expensive than well-planned supermarket shopping, but the time savings, hassle factor, and transportation web-of-goals impacts might make that palatable. It's definitely more expensive than pantry-based bulk shopping at Costo (or similar), which is what we switched back to after Amazon Fresh.

[jennypenny]

I placed another order last night while I was working, and when I got up this morning at 6am it was already sitting on my porch.

I'm going to stick with it. I think I'll continue my quarterly trip to the wholesale club to stockpile, and then use this to supplement as needed. I find it much easier to manage how much I'm spending overall, and it's a much better use of my time. Even if I wasn't working instead of shopping, I could see spending the extra free time on exercise or almost anything and having it be worth it.