I live in an area with access to Amazon Fresh, and if you do as well, I highly recommend it. The areas with access are: Seattle, Northern California, Southern California, New York, and Philadelphia.
To determine whether it was financially worthwhile, I started by calculating that it costs me ~$43 a month to get groceries when factoring in both the value of my time and the cost of gas. This would be salary/8760 hours in a year*amount of time spent driving and in a store plus the estimated cost of gas. I haven't considered other externalities such as wear and tear on the car, etc. It is just time and gas. In contrast, Amazon Fresh costs $16.43 a month, and I spend about as much as I spend at a physical store. In fact, I have actually managed to come in, on average, between $5 and $10 under my $60 weekly food budget. The quality of the food purchased is the same or better than what I buy at the stores I would otherwise go to. As a result, the difference between what I'd spend in a store versus on Amazon Fresh is negligible.
The result is that I've saved $25 each month while buying back six hours of my time each month by not driving or going in the store. The number jumps to $55 each month when adding in the average savings. I put the minimum savings in perspective by viewing it as the cost of a round trip plane ticket back home (usually around $300) or 1/3 of a flight to Europe (approx. $800-$900 for me). If you're trying to be environmentally friendly, then you can also consider the decreased environmental cost of not driving for whatever duration it would take for you to get to and from your grocery store.
Other companies have similar services, including Safeway, Target, Walmart, and Fred Meyer. I don't know much about these services, but it looks like they each have a per delivery fee and/or monthly subscription fee. It seems like a couple of them also allow you to show up and have your online order brought to your car, which at least saves you the time and stress of being in the store. As it relates specifically to Amazon Fresh, though, I'd be happy to answer any questions people might have (and no, I don't work at Amazon - I am just super stoked by how much of my time has been freed up).
January 07, 2017 at 11:36PM
