Advertisement
Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products.

Amazon Prime members get free one-hour grocery pickups at Whole Foods

It's a particularly helpful perk during the pandemic.

Amazon

Amazon continues to pile on Whole Foods perks for Prime members, and its latest may be important during the COVID-19 pandemic. The internet giant is now offering (via CNBC) free one-hour grocery pickup at Whole Foods Market stores for all Prime subscribers in the US. So long as you spend $35 or more, you can have store staff load groceries in your trunk.

The company is pitching the option as well-suited to the pandemic, when just venturing inside the store can be stressful. At the same time, it expected pickup to become a “more permanent solution” even after the pandemic was over. About 68 percent of customers planned to keep using pickup in the long run, according to a survey from Global Data Research.

Amazon already offered free two-hour grocery deliveries to Prime members from both Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh.

There are plenty of competition-related incentives to launch a service like this, of course. Amazon has battled Walmart in groceries for years, and it now faces more pressure from online services like Instacart. If it didn’t offer pickup, it risked losing customers to rival stores and services that could provide the added convenience right when it’s most valuable.