Yesterday, Amazon unveiled the second generation of its Dash Wand, an Alexa-enabled home barcode scanner that adds grocery items to an AmazonFresh cart. Yesterday, the Dash was a promotional tool, a way for Prime members in five urban markets (New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Northern and Southern California) to get back-doored into the $15\/month AmazonFresh grocery delivery service. <\/p>\n
Did we mention that was yesterday? <\/p>\n
Today, Amazon announced a $13.7 billion deal to buy the Whole Foods grocery chain, which includes 461 stories across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. Today, the Amazon Dash Wand got a lot more interesting. <\/p>\n
Most Americans live within an hours drive of a Whole Foods, and many are a half-hour or less from one. Thats good news for a company like Amazon, whos been slowly but surely building out the necessary logistics for on-demand grocery delivery, but has yet to expand outside major metro areas. <\/p>\n
AmazonFresh debuted a decade ago, in 2007. The Prime Now one- or two-hour delivery service has been steadily expanding since it launched in New York City in 2014. Whats more, Prime Now got an Alexa-integration upgrade in March of this year. The updated Dash Wand, which takes up the mantle of its defunct and limited predecessor and a cluttered array of Dash Buttons, is a key piece in this on-demand delivery puzzle. <\/p>\n
Ask for eggs, and ye shall receive. <\/p>\n
From a shoppers standpoint, building a grocery list via voice assistant is a lot more impactful than asking Alexa to buy, say, a pair of sneakers. Interacting with Alexabe it through the Dash Wand, an Echo device, or Amazon appcould become as natural an experience as saying Honey, we need eggs. <\/p>\n
The key difference: When you say that to Amazon, the eggs could just arrive. Fresh, organic, and straight off the shelves of the nearest Whole Foods store. Or so we hope. <\/p>\n
On the backend, Amazon has been developing an infrastructure to support such an enterprise for years. The Seattle company has deals with many delivery contractors, and also runs a network of independent gig couriers through a program called Amazon Flex. All this is in service of making the last mile of the delivery chain move as quickly and efficiently as possible. <\/p>\n
It makes perfect sense that all this infrastructure can support a growing e-commerce grocery business. Though services like Instacart, Fresh Direct, and Google Express make good business delivering sundries, online grocery retail is a mere fraction (1.2 percent, to be precise) of the entire food-shopping market, according to research firm Euromonitor. At the same time, online grocers are projected to grow more than four times as quickly as their brick-and-mortar counterparts. <\/p>\n
Order up! <\/p>\n
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Read more: <\/p>\n
Buying Whole Foods could complete an Amazon ecosystem a decade in the making - Popular Science<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, Amazon unveiled the second generation of its Dash Wand, an Alexa-enabled home barcode scanner that adds grocery items to an AmazonFresh cart. Yesterday, the Dash was a promotional tool, a way for Prime members in five urban markets (New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Northern and Southern California) to get back-doored into the $15\/month AmazonFresh grocery delivery service. Did we mention that was yesterday? Continue reading