Amazon Fresh: lifesaver?

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!

Do 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.

One 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:

One of the other bags held the refrigerated items:

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

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?