Amazon Fresh expanding online grocery service to all of Seattle

If you haven't seen the lime green Amazon Fresh delivery trucks rolling through your Seattle neighborhood yet, just wait. After testing the concept in neighborhoods such as Ballard, Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, Amazon tells Bloomberg News that it plans to roll out service to the entire Seattle metro area by the end of the year.

“We have a lot of confidence in the long-term economics,” Amazon vice president Doug Herrington tells Bloomberg. “For a significant portion of the population, they’re going to find that the convenience, selection and pricing of online grocery shopping is going to be really compelling.”

The story provides some interesting historical context of online grocery delivery, noting the ill-fated Webvan. (Interestingly, Amazon owns the Webvan domain name and uses it to sell nonperishable food items).

Amazon also was a major investor in Bellevue-based HomeGrocer.com, which was sold to Webvan before that company's collapse in the dot-com bust.

Former HomeGrocer.com CEO Terry Drayton has often said that his company ramped up expansion in too many cities too fast, a lesson that Amazon has apparently learned by keeping Amazon Fresh only in Seattle.

No word yet on when the online retailer may take the concept to another city. But if Amazon.com can turn itself into a modern day milkman, it could prove to be a very interesting model for the customer-crazed company.

[Flickr photo via Jeff Sandquist]

About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

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