Amazon Extends One-Hour Prime Delivery to Local Businesses

Amazon’s is expanding its Prime Now delivery service to local businesses.

Starting today, Amazon Prime subscribers in New York can order meals from Gourmet Garage, groceries from D’Agostino, baked goods from Billy’s Bakery. The service, which promises deliveries within the hour, will soon be expanded to gourmet Italian market Eataly and Westside Market, a grocery store with five locations throughout Manhattan.

“Amazon is a formidable opponent of anyone who wants to sell and deliver anything to any one of their customers,” says Bryan Eisenberg, chief marketing officer at IdealSpot. “What they’re doing is building loyalty into their ecosystem where any time you think of purchasing anything, you’re looking at Amazon first. That’s the concept behind their Prime membership concept and behind everything else: how can they keep adding value to their customers to lock them in for life?”

This is the e-commerce juggernaut’s latest move to assert itself as a local provider, following April’s Home Services, which lets consumers schedule appointments with people who do things like paint and install hot water heaters. With the new delivery option, Amazon is expanding from services to goods, competing with Fresh Direct, Seamless, GrubHub and even Uber, which recently entered the local delivery space.

Eisenberg, who speaks on Amazon’s four pillars of success, says that the e-commerce giant has mastered recognizing vulnerabilities and customers’ needs that other companies are failing to address.”What they’re doing is training consumers on what to expect,” he says. “I only wish they could take over the postal service.”

Prime Now is also available in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Dallas and Miami. The local delivery will be expanded to those cities in the near future, according to Amazon.