With a growing worldwide trend of delivered fresh goods, 2016 is bringing about changes to how consumers access food. Traditional methods have seen overseas markets face competition from order and pay apps, third party online ordering and delivery services. Examples of tech-driven food delivery include Google and Amazon who have recently entered the grocery delivery game and also UberEats, which focuses on high speed delivery from restaurants in Toronto, Paris and the US. If these gains momentum we may see a surge of similar applications in Australia.
Google is now delivering fresh produce and other perishable goods in parts of the United States.
Deliveries will occur through its Google Express platform, a delivery service which started in San Francisco in 2013. Until now the service has only handled non-perishable items.
According to Tech Times, Google will now be partnering with US grocery retailers Whole Foods, Costco, Smart and Final Stores and Vicente’s Supermarket in order to deliver a wide range of grocery items. Deliveries will only occur in Los Angeles and San Francisco to begin with.
The items will be delivered on the same day that they are ordered and customers will be given a two-hour time-frame in which the groceries should be delivered. Customers can either pay US$5.00 per delivery or pay a Google Express membership fee of US$95.
Google will be competing against a number of other companies in the US which already deliver groceries including Amazon.
Originally published in Australian Food News.
