Once you realize that you can't buy shit anymore without some simple platforms get a huge cut/fee in the middle: rental cars, hotel bookings, flights, meals, everything else... oh I forgot: taxi rides!
Amazon Restaurants
71–80 of 218 posts
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#72So Amazon now has 5 services to order food from: Prime Now, Prime Pantry, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Restaurants, and regular Amazon. Did I miss anything? I can't say I'm having an easy time keeping track of which service to use for what.
Then we can assume that there were 5 independent projects run internally, with little coordination between them.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#73Amazon Restaurants is a great service which has been around for some time now, at least here in Seattle. I use it pretty much exclusively now instead of other similar services I've used in the past. The minimum order is much lower ($20 instead of $30 or $40 a lot of other services add), there's no delivery fees, and your driver is tracked via GPS with guaranteed delivery windows, so you have a much better idea of when you're order will actually arrive. There's also a better selection of restaurants than other services.
That said, the UI isn't quite as user friendly. It feels bolted on top of Prime Now, so you don't really have a typical menu, a regular shopping cart is used and shared with Prime Now which just feels a bit off. I think it would feel much nicer if they built a website specific to food ordering instead of trying to shoehorn it into Prime Now.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#74This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…
While that is an unfortunate situation, I would actually imagine Amazon's entry to this market (which they actually entered over a year ago), would be good for the restaurants. Many thought they had some diversity in the early days with Grubhub and Seamless until they merged. Now there are dozens of services overlaying to deliver for restaurants, companies like Uber Eats, Foodler, Doordash, Postmates, and many more.
Amazon here is a me-too play here, and I'd be shocked if they reached the concentration to sink a restaurant given so many incumbents.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#75So Amazon now has 5 services to order food from: Prime Now, Prime Pantry, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Restaurants, and regular Amazon. Did I miss anything? I can't say I'm having an easy time keeping track of which service to use for what.
I think I have like 2 or 3 amazon apps on my phone. Some have a tiny 'prime' or some other logo to differentiate them, but I can never tell instant which app to do what.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#76One differentiation with amazon restaurants is at least in my market they don't mark up food prices (like door dash and kindof postmates) and they don't charge for delivery. Uber eats is the best of these I've found, but it's a pain meeting at the curb. Amazon restaurants has by far the worst drivers though, I think compounded by tipping before they deliver, and no ratings system
> Amazon restaurants has by far the worst drivers though, I think compounded by tipping before they deliver, and no ratings system
A friend of mine is a Dasher. You do tip before they arrive, and they have no idea how they've been tipped--they just get whatever the total of all the tips of their shift are... I've never been so disincentivized to tip.
The rating system also sucks because the app will force you to rate your last experience if you haven't the next time you try to order. Lots of five stars from me because, when I'm trying to get my dinner to my house ASAP, I can't be bothered to give an accurate and fair rating.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#77This is obviously part of Amazon's effort to build out their own delivery network in order to muscle out fedex, ups, usps, etc. If their drivers aren't delivering packages they can be delivering food. That makes their whole delivery network stronger because it allows them to have more drivers employed driving around town all the time. It's the same reason Uber got into food delivery.
Does that mean your food delivery depends on the package delivery schedule? "Sorry your pizza is cold but we had to deliver a TV first."
For myself, I usually prefer to just go and pick up myself; that's almost always the fastest option.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#78They advertise Bay Area as one of the regions they deliver, yet it's not available in the South Bay. I wonder what's the logistics overhead to make it available elsewhere in the Bay Area where you already have a Prime Now delivery network.
They don't deliver to me and I'm in the middle of the peninsula. Amazon Fresh and Prime Now don't deliver here either.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#79This is obviously part of Amazon's effort to build out their own delivery network in order to muscle out fedex, ups, usps, etc. If their drivers aren't delivering packages they can be delivering food. That makes their whole delivery network stronger because it allows them to have more drivers employed driving around town all the time. It's the same reason Uber got into food delivery.
Does that mean your food delivery depends on the package delivery schedule? "Sorry your pizza is cold but we had to deliver a TV first." For myself, I usually prefer to just go and pick up myself; that's almost always the fastest option.
They should probably prioritize the food, and fill off-time with package deliveries.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#80I can imagine the day I will need an Amazon account in order to enter my house :)