Many of us already rely on Amazon to deliver everything from electronic gadgets to gardening equipment, but the online retail giant wants to reach out into even more markets — including meal delivery. A report from Reuters points to job postings that hint at a new restaurant division for the company, operating in Seattle and New York.
While it’s not clear exactly what the new service would look like, the listings suggest Amazon is looking at building up relationships with restaurants, so presumably one day you could shop for a McDonald’s or Applebee’s through the Amazon storefront and get a hot meal right to your door. It’s a market a number of companies are trying to crack — and Amazon has recently poached an executive from GrubHub, one of the most prominent ones.
This isn’t a completely new move by Amazon, as a trial version of such a service already exists in Seattle (where the company has its headquarters). However, the new job postings suggest the scale of the trial is getting ramped up in the near future, so we might not have too much longer to wait for it to become an official service.
It’s getting more and more difficult to keep up with all the different markets Amazon is experimenting in. Its AmazonFresh groceries delivery service is still running as a limited trial, and it has been playing around with the idea of bicycle couriers in New York to get your packages to you faster. Let’s not forget the company’s plans to create a fleet of delivery drones either.
If Amazon does decide to launch its own meal delivery service on top of everything else it already does, it won’t have the market all to itself. Uber is another up-and-coming tech firm that can bring food straight to your door with a project tentatively titled UberEats. As with the proposed Amazon scheme, restaurants take care of the food, with Uber drivers sorting out the delivery.
