Amazon quietly jumps into the food delivery game


Hungry after all that online shopping? If you live in the Seattle area, you won't even need to leave Amazon.com to order food straight to your door. The e-commerce giant quietly launched the still-unnamed service in Seattle last weekend during the Thanksgiving holiday lull, and while it's not perfect, the service could eventually be promising:
Nonetheless, just over 100 partner restaurants are signed on; delivery ranges vary, as expected, by location in the city. Food goes into your cart, and you of course charge the meal to your Amazon account. It still has kinks to be worked out, for sure — there's no way to sort by cuisine or search all of the menus at once, for example, so better build in time to guess and check whether you're craving yucca fries with your burger. [Grub Street]
While Bezos and co. say the new service will roll out gradually "unless things go gangbusters," a company as huge as Amazon certainly has a large enough platform to pose a threat to food delivery behemoths GrubHub and Seamless. But TechCrunch reports that Amazon has its sights set even higher, and is hoping to eventually merge its food delivery service with other nascent projects like its point-of-sale service, Amazon Local Register, and its grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh. How everything pans out remains to be seen, but with any luck, the Bezos Empire will still be on the way up.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
-
The FDA plans to embrace AI agencywide
In the Spotlight Rumors are swirling about a bespoke AI chatbot being developed for the FDA by OpenAI
-
Digital consent: Law targets deepfake and revenge porn
Feature The Senate has passed a new bill that will make it a crime to share explicit AI-generated images of minors and adults without consent
-
Will Republicans tax the rich?
Today's Big Question Trump is waffling on the possibility of taxing wealthy earners
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposes
speed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
-
New Mexico to investigate death of Gene Hackman, wife
speed read The Oscar-winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their home with no signs of foul play
-
Giant schnauzer wins top prize at Westminster show
Speed Read Monty won best in show at the 149th Westminster Kennel Club dog show
-
Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar take top Grammys
Speed Read Beyoncé took home album of the year for 'Cowboy Carter' and Kendrick Lamar's diss track 'Not Like Us' won five awards
-
The Louvre is giving 'Mona Lisa' her own room
Speed Read The world's most-visited art museum is getting a major renovation
-
Honda and Nissan in merger talks
Speed Read The companies are currently Japan's second and third-biggest automakers, respectively
-
Taylor Swift wraps up record-shattering Eras tour
Speed Read The pop star finally ended her long-running tour in Vancouver, Canada
-
Drake claims illegal boosting, defamation
Speed Read The rapper accused Universal Music of boosting Kendrick Lamar's diss track and said UMG allowed him to be falsely accused of pedophilia