Amazon has announced that its one-hour-or-less restaurant delivery service is finally live in New York — kicking off today with 350 eateries across Manhattan — as well as launching in Dallas. These represent the service’s ninth and tenth-biggest cities, respectively.
The Internet giant first introduced meal deliveries in Seattle back in September, before expanding to cover Los Angeles, Austin, Portland, Baltimore, San Diego, Chicago, and San Francisco just last month. The service is available to Prime subscribers who pay the $99 annual membership, which comes with a range of benefits, from video streaming and ebook-lending to super-fast same-day delivery on a range of goods, including groceries.
Available through the Prime Now app, Amazon is one of a number of companies looking to infiltrate the lucrative transport and logistics realm, with the likes of Uber and Postmates also expanding into meal delivery. To see if Amazon’s food delivery service is available in your area, plug in your zip code — if it is, you’ll see a “Restaurants” option on the home screen.
Expanding on a guarantee first announced for the San Francisco rollout last month, Amazon is also including the “no menu markup guarantee” for the New York launch. This means that if you find a food item through Prime Now listed at a higher price than on the restaurant’s own online menu, Amazon will refund the full price of the item within 24 hours. This is likely a tacit acknowledgement that restaurants may hike their prices through Prime Now to offset fees charged by Amazon, which are thought to be around the 27 percent mark, though Amazon doesn’t allow that practice.
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Amazon actually debuted its Prime Now delivery service in Manhattan way back in 2014, so in many ways it’s surprising that it has taken so long for restaurant deliveries to be added to the mix. The 350 restaurants now accessible through Amazon include 34 Le Pain Quotidien outlets, Wafels & Dinges, Harlem Pizza co., Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken, John’s of Bleecker Street, and Junior’s Restaurant & Cheesecake. More will be added in the coming weeks and months.
A final point here: Amazon seems to have changed the consumer-facing branding of the restaurant delivery service. Previously, it was referred to as “Prime Now Restaurant Delivery,” but with this latest launch the company seems to be using “Amazon Restaurants,” the in-house division name the company was already using.
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