Amazon enters takeaway market with Restaurants service

Monday, September 19, 2016 - 12:26 by Simon Crisp

Traditional takeaways have been revolutionised by the dawn of the internet age and the arrival of easy to use smartphone apps, meaning that ordering something from a local eatery has never been easier. And with the rise of services like Deliveroo, it does not even matter if individual restaurants offer their own door to door delivery service, as almost any outlet is now eligible as an option.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the rise of this market did not slip under the radar of Amazon, as this week it launched a new service called Amazon Restaurants, to take on the start-ups that have forged a profitable path to success already, according to the Daily Mail.

As with many of the e-commerce giant’s experimental services, Restaurants, is only available to subscribers to Amazon Prime and has so far been limited to London. But by next year, there should be more major cities and towns which receive similar treatment.

Its initial rollout in the US in 2015 was a minor success and early impressions from its implementation in the UK capital have been positive, further justifying the £79 annual cost of a subscription to Prime.

Amazon is also looking to outdo Deliveroo in particular by making sure that the prices that its customers pay to order food from a restaurant via safe shopping online are the same as those they would face if they visited the outlet in person. Any overcharging will be refunded in order to sweeten the deal.

In the short term, the deliveries available as part of the Amazon Restaurants service are free, so long as the minimum spend of £15 is met. But it seems likely that a delivery fee will be introduced, since it is impractical to run such a service in the world of safe shopping online without paying for the infrastructure behind it.