- You may no longer need a Prime membership to order groceries from Amazon Fresh.
- Amazon said this week that non-Prime members in some cities can now order deliveries through Fresh.
- The company told Bloomberg it will expand this offering nation-wide by the end of this year.
Amazon wants more shoppers to buy its groceries.
Earlier this week, the retail giant began allowing some customers without Amazon Prime subscriptions to order fresh produce without a membership, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
That means shoppers in a dozen cities in the US — including San Francisco, Boston, Denver, and Colorado — no longer have to pay $139 for an annual Prime membership fee to get deliveries from Amazon Fresh, the Amazon grocery subsidiary with dozens of physical stores across a handful of states.
The expansion to non-Prime members marks a stark departure from how Amazon had originally operated its grocery delivery service, which focused on servicing exclusively Prime member holders.
The e-commerce retail giant has been attempting to grow its grocery service for years now. In 2017, the company acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. It’s also tried to build out its network of Amazon Fresh stores but has struggled — leading to layoffs of hundreds of workers and an expansion pause.
Amazon told Bloomberg that the company is looking to allow non-members across the US to order from Fresh by the end of 2023 and plans to include products from Whole Foods and other grocers over time. A spokesperson for Amazon declined to comment on when the nationwide rollout would occur or at what point Whole Foods and other grocers’ products would be available in the offering.
The move comes amid a wider effort to revamp Amazon’s grocery service. The company said it is working on a single cart that customers can use to check out groceries from Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and Amazon.com at one time. Currently, customers have to order separately from each site and wait for separate deliveries.
There’s still an incentive to have a Prime membership.
Non-members ordering from Fresh will have to pay higher delivery fees than those with subscriptions. Delivery fees for customers without memberships range from $7.95 to $13.95, depending on the order size, while Prime members will be charged fees ranging from $3.95 to $9.95. Prime members will also continue to get free deliveries on orders $150 or more.
See below the cities where non-Prime members can get deliveries from Amazon Fresh today:
- Austin, TX
- Boston, MA
- Charlotte, N.C.
- Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
- Denver, CO
- Nashville, TN
- Phoenix, AZ
- Portland, OR
- Richmond, VA
- Sacramento, CA
- San Diego, CA
- San Francisco, CA
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