We tried Amazon's new food delivery in Manhattan. It was fine.
Amazon officially launched its food delivery service in Manhattan and Dallas on Tuesday.
We tried it -- and it was fine.
Amazon, which offers food delivery to members of Prime, its premium subscription service for expedited deliveries, has already launched the service in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Austin, Baltimore and Portland, Ore.
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Delivery is free and billed as coming within one hour or less. Amazon has also pledged to make sure prices on its delivery menus are the same as in the restaurants.
To try it out, we went to the Prime Now page, where there's now an enticing new "restaurants" button.
The service is technically a part of its Prime Now service, which offers quick delivery of basic items like groceries and household items.
Amazon's Manhattan food delivery is starting with 350 restaurants, with more on the way.
My colleague Seth Fiegerman decided on Waldy's for pizza after I told him I didn't feel like getting S'Mac. (Seth's note: this was a questionable decision.)
The layout is pretty simple and the concept is certainly familiar enough, given the never-ending procession of new meal delivery services from Uber, Postmates, DoorDash, Square, not to mention older offerings from GrubHub and Seamless.
Amazon is a relatively new entrant to that field, first inching into restaurant delivery in December 2014 in Seattle. Since then, it has been adding cities steadily.
We settled on splitting a couple small pizzas between us -- a classic margherita pie and a sausage and peppers. There's a promo-code for $10 off your first order.
Delivery is free, but our bill also autofilled a $5 tip. Yes, you can change that, but good luck not feeling awkward about it.
We placed the order at 11:56 A.M.
Amazon's delivery service also lets you track the status of your order and the delivery person, much like Uber and Postmates.
It's tough to say how much demand there was for the service, but our order didn't end up coming within the one-hour timeframe.
I received a text almost exactly one hour after making the order to let me know the order was out for delivery.
The tracker also told me that "Giovan" would be making the drop off. Once on its way, it got to us quickly.
Pizza was in hand by 1:09, a little late but not egregious.
Unfortunately, it seems like the pizza may have been sitting for a bit. It was lukewarm by the time we ate, but still tasty.
At that point, I wasn't terribly upset. Anybody who has ordered food delivery more than a handful of times has had to wait a few times. I was willing to chalk it up to some first-day friction.
What remained unclear was just what Amazon offered that the other services didn't. The experience was almost exactly the same from front to back -- until the very end.
Amazon had tracked the order and determined it was late. By the time I had eaten my first slice, an email apology along with a $10 credit was in my inbox. Based on the time stamp, Amazon had sent the email before I even received the pizza.
That's relatively impressive. And now I'll have to use Amazon's food delivery again to take advantage of that $10 credit.
All in all, a perfectly fine service.
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Topics Amazon
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
