Amazon has jumped into the restaurant delivery fray in London by launching its Amazon Restaurants service. Prime members in a number of London postcodes will now be able to use the Prime Now app to order food from participating restaurants.
Customers in postcodes where the delivery service is available will see Amazon Restaurants on the home page. They can view participating restaurants, browse menus and track the status of their delivery.
Amazon launched this service in Seattle last September and has since rolled it out to a number of metro areas in the US including Manhattan, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Austin, Atlanta, Miami, Baltimore, Houston and Portland.
Amazon Restaurants in London promises delivery within the hour, saying that average delivery time will be 45 minutes.
Commenting on the London launch, Al Wilkinson, UK Head of Amazon Restaurants, said: “London offers some of the best cuisine from around the world, so we’re delighted that Amazon Prime customers can now enjoy food from their favourite restaurants via Amazon’s ultra-fast Prime Now service.
“Based on our own research into what is important to consumers in food delivery, our team have hand-picked a selection of the best quality local restaurants in London. We’re excited to be helping many of these small businesses start offering home delivery for the very first time.”
The Amazon Restaurant’s coverage in London currently includes the City, West End, Westminster, Pimlico and Victoria in central London; Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Bow, Clapton, and Homerton in the east; Islington, Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill in the north; Kensington and Chelsea in the west; and Southwark, Lambeth, Vauxhall and Kennington in south London. The plan, of course, it to expand the coverage as the service gets into its stride.
The cost for Prime members will be free, with a minimum order value of £15. Unlike many of its offerings, Amazon will find an intensely competitive and crowded market. There are a number of small, local players as well as Deliveroo and lately UberEats has gone into the fray. Given the cutthroat nature of this sector, it will be interesting to see how this pans out for Amazon…
