Amazon to start free food deliveries in UK

Online retail giant Amazon is planning to extend its online grocery footprint across the UK by the end of 2020.

The existing Amazon Fresh service offers around 10,000 products including fresh, chilled and frozen food. Amazon Fresh currently only offers same or next-day grocery deliveries for customers in London and parts of the Home Counties. Customers have had to subscribe to Amazon Prime to access the service and, until now, users have to pay an additional monthly fee or a delivery charge per order.

In the first steps to expansion, the service is now a free benefit to Amazon subscribers in these areas on orders above £40. About 40 postcodes in Surrey also now have access to a faster offer, with a possible same-day delivery if an order is placed by 9pm.

Amazon wants to roll out this quicker and unlimited free delivery grocery service to cities across the UK by the end of this year.  “Grocery delivery is one of the fastest growing businesses at Amazon and we think this will be one of the most-loved Prime benefits in the UK,” said Russell Jones, country manager of Amazon Fresh UK.

Online food sales have almost doubled during the pandemic, but Amazon said the expansion plan was in the pipeline. “We've been planning this for a long time,” said Jones. It’s a big step up in volume. In the early days of lockdown all our capacity was being used. We're confident that we can launch this service now at this point in time.”

Amazon Fresh launched in the UK in 2016 and the company has never given sales figures or customer numbers.

According to market research firm Mintel, there are 15 million Prime subscribers.