Amazon primes U.K. for grocery delivery

Amazon.com has been busy expanding its same-day Prime delivery options across the U.S., and now it is hopping the pond.



Amazon U.K. has launched Amazon Pantry, a nationwide service for Prime members. Amazon Pantry offers more than 4,000 everyday grocery items, including food and drink, household supplies, baby and child care, pet, and health and beauty products.



Customers can fill up as much or as little of an Amazon Pantry box as they wish for same-day delivery with a fee of about $4.50 for the first box and about $1.50 for each additional box in the same order. Each box can hold up to 44 pounds of goods.



“Amazon Pantry has been designed to take the heavy lifting out of replenishing the often bulky basics and store cupboard essentials that people need every day,” said Helene Parthenay, Amazon Pantry manager at Amazon. U.K. “We’re always looking to innovate on behalf of our customers and find ways to save them time and money. We think they will love the broad selection, quick delivery and low prices of Amazon Pantry.”



Amazon Pantry is also offered in the U.S., Japan and Germany. It could be a prelude to rolling out the full-fledged Amazon Fresh service, which provides more than 20,000 grocery items for delivery, in the U.K. Amazon has offered a limited assortment of food and drink items in the U.K. since 2010, and also has been delivering some chilled food and drink products to members of its Prime Now one-hour delivery service.



Although Amazon Prime is offered across the U.K., Prime Now is currently only available in the cities of London and Birmingham, with rollouts to more U.K. metro areas planned for the future. Considering the relatively small size of the U.K., Amazon can offer national coverage of at least same-day grocery delivery much more easily than it could in a larger nation like the U.S.



In addition, the four leading U.K. grocery chains – Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons – all offer online grocery delivery. German grocer Aldi has been expanding in the U.K. and winning market share with low prices, presumably Amazon would also like to grab some U.K. grocery market share with convenience.