Amazon will now deliver your grocery order for free — and within an hour

Amazon is rolling out free grocery delivery to Prime members, raising the bar at a time when competition is already at a high point.

The retail and logistics behemoth announced Tuesday that Prime members will get free, fast delivery from AmazonFresh and Whole Foods Market included in their subscription. Members can now order tens of thousands of products online, including meat, seafood, produce, snacks and household essentials to their door in one- to two-hours depending on the city. It was previously an additional $14.99 for the service on top of the cost of a Prime membership.

“Given the rapid growth of grocery delivery we expect this will be a popular benefit,” the company said in a press release.

The announcement comes as grocery delivery companies face off in a fierce competition for a growing number of online grocery shoppers. On the table is an estimated $100 billion in online grocery spending by 2022, according to the Food Marketing Institute and Nielsen.

In just the last year, online grocery shopping has soared from 38 percent to 56 percent, according to an August 2019 report from the research firm TABS Analytics.

While it still represents only 2 percent of the market, it’s the fastest-growing e-commerce category, at around 18 percent, according to the e-commerce research firm eMarketer.

“The whole market is at an inflection point and there is some evidence of hockey stick growth in adoption of online grocery [in 2019],” Andrew Lipsman, a principal analyst with eMarketer, told NBC News. “The proverbial millennials have families now, so we have online habits but we’re at a totally different life stage. We’re not fresh out of college anymore.” ….[Read More]