Amazon Prime Now to Deliver Groceries From Whole Foods

Amazon.com is moving full speed ahead with its grocery business. Mashable reports the e-commerce giant's Prime Now delivery service — which delivers groceries, household items, gifts and more in two hours — is partnering with Whole Foods. Prime customers can now have their groceries and lifestyle items delivered to their door in two hours or less. "We're happy to bring our customers the convenience of free two-hour delivery through Prime Now, as well as access to thousands of natural and organic groceries and locally sourced favorites," Whole Foods Market Co-Founder and CEO John Mackey said in a press release.

Total Retail's Take: Since Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods last year, the grocery sector has been turned upside down. For example, lowering the costs of some of “Whole Paychecks” grocery items. While many changes have happened, it seems customers are still struggling to embrace the acquisition to drive the grocery sales Amazon is looking for. However, with this latest integration between the two brands, I think customers are going to feel differently about the partnership very soon. The bigger question is what does this mean for online grocery retailers? Tom Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Commerce, shares his thoughts below:

“Amazon is an expert in making it easy to shop with it. Prime has dominated e-commerce retail by taking away customer pain points, and that same strategy will now apply to online grocery. By acquiring Whole Foods and making Prime its premium loyalty program, benefits like special savings and two-hour delivery will be available to members. While that will surely help drive new Prime joins, bringing all of this to their 90 million existing Prime members is going to make it very difficult for other online grocers to compete.”