Amazon Fresh: lifesaver?

a group of green bags

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I started a new job a few months ago, right before we left on our big trip. Before I started this new job, I was self-employed, so I had a very flexible schedule and I worked from home. Now I work full-time in an office, which is a 45-minute commute from my house.

I absolutely love my new job, and I’m so thrilled that I am doing what I love (writing about fashion), but to say that my new schedule has been a bit of a “lifestyle adjustment” for our family would be an understatement.

It’s been really hard. So we’ve been looking for ways to make it easier…and that’s why I was SUPER excited to learn about Amazon Fresh. I was especially thrilled because of the way I found out – a $30 discount on an order of $50 or more. Woo hoo!

Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 1.15.41 PMDo you know about Amazon Fresh? It’s basically an on-demand delivery service. Amazon partners with local grocery stores and restaurants to deliver almost anything you need…within hours. Out of milk? They’ll drop off a gallon on your doorstep tomorrow morning. Need a dessert for your dinner party on Friday? You can schedule an Amazon Fresh delivery, and skip a trip to the store. You can also add other items delivered by Amazon to your order: books, batteries, a 2015 calendar…the only requirement is that the total cost of your order (across all items) is at least $35.

Since one of our challenges has been grocery shopping (who has time to go grocery shopping??), I was only too happy to put Amazon Fresh to the test right away, especially because the grocery items they offer are actually items that I want to buy. This differs from our local Safeway delivery service, which features some things I want, but not all – so it kind of defeats the purpose, because in order to complete my list, I would have to go shopping anyway.

I saw the above email at 10 pm, placed an order for $50 worth of groceries at 11 pm, and scheduled a delivery for the next day between 6-9 pm.

I honestly looked forward to the delivery all day. Would the items be fresh? Would they be well-packaged? Would they arrive on time?

The answer, all around, was YES.

The delivery person was so unobtrusive that I didn’t even hear a knock at the door. Josh went out of the house at around 8 pm to take out the trash, and there on the porch were three large bags.

amazon freshOne of the bags held a styrofoam freezer. Inside were the frozen items I had ordered, packed on top of a couple of sealed packs of dry ice.

My kids loved the part where we placed the dry ice on a tray and put it in the sink:

dry ice

One of the other bags held the refrigerated items:

amazon fresh

At the bottom of that bag were four large, Amazon-branded ice packs:

Amazon Fresh

The third bag was packed with the pantry items I had ordered.

Everything was in perfect shape: cold items were cold, frozen items were frozen, nothing was squashed or broken.

This was a very exciting moment for me. Not having to go grocery shopping each week would be a a very welcome convenience. Pair that with a local restaurant meal delivery service and overnight shipping of Amazon items…I’m signing up.

So far, Amazon Fresh is only in select markets: Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.

And I admit that the cost gave me about ten seconds of pause. It’s $299/year. This price includes Amazon Prime (which I already have, and have come to depend on). With the $30 discount from the email, the cost is $270/year, or $22.50/month.

Worth it to me.

How about you?

26 Comments

  1. This service is almost identical to the infamous Webvan of circa 2000. I was a huge fan of Webvan, but of course they went bankrupt because they never charged enough for their service. That said, I still find $300 a year a bit much to cough up up front. If we actually stayed home, I would probably give the service a shot.

  2. Gene – I think we actually still have some Webvan boxes. 😉

    I’ve already used Amazon Fresh 3 times, and it’s been 3 days. I think I’m their target demographic.

  3. Sadly this is not available in Manhattan.I tried several different zip codes to check. Too bad because in my experience Fresh Direct produce tyoically comes under ripe or moldy–past two orders I have gotten a credit but not my money back–and of course they don’t carry a huge variety of brands. I stopped ordering from them. But I am lucky there is a Trader Joes a few blocks away.

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