Amazon Prime customers in San Francisco are getting a little extra incentive to try out Amazon Fresh, thanks to the delivery of some free care packages from the grocery service.
https://twitter.com/juliettetang/status/422437106225410048
Twitter has lit up with reports from around the city that Amazon is delivering bags of food to the doorsteps of city residents, as a promotion for its grocery delivery service, which started running in the city last month. Re/code reported that one of their writers also received a bag of non-perishable food, including Cream of Mushroom soup, pasta, a can of Coke and fish taco seasoning. While it’s not perfectly clear why some people are getting Amazon Fresh deliveries, Re/code said that the common thread between all of the customers they’ve encountered is an Amazon Prime subscription.
The package seems to be a bit of an odd choice for a service that promises fresh food, but since recipients don’t get any warning of an impending delivery, handing out non-perishables seems like the best idea.
Annoyed at two @amazon fresh delivery trucks blocking a small street in Bernal SF; free sample on my doorstep. pic.twitter.com/92SOavE6zv
— Kathryn Shantz (@kathrynshantz) January 9, 2014
Still, not everyone is loving the delivery. Especially on the narrow, hilly streets of some of SF’s residential neighborhoods, Amazon Fresh’s massive trucks could prove to be something of a traffic problem.
It’s unclear what this means for Amazon Fresh’s penetration in San Francisco. This is the first I’ve ever heard about the company giving food away to potential Fresh users, and it may indicate that Amazon is having a harder time cracking the Bay Area grocery delivery market, which is already full of competitors, including Google Shopping Express and Instacart, which was started by a former Amazon employee. Still, most of the tweets I’ve seen on the subject have been favorable to Amazon, so its campaign may be working.
We’ve reached out to Amazon for comment, and will update this post if we hear back.
