Amazon looks to deliver ‘Shake Shack, Chipotle’ amid food push

Bloomberg

Amazon.com Inc. may soon bring Shake Shack burgers and Chipotle burritos to your door as it pushes deeper into the growing market for restaurant delivery.
The e-commerce titan has been working to crack the code on food delivery for at least a decade. Now that Amazon has a major toehold in the grocery industry following its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market, it’s trying to muscle into the restaurant business. Amazon has teamed up with a company called Olo, which provides digital order and pay technology to 200 restaurant brands with about 40,000 US locations, potentially giving Amazon access to a slew of delivery orders. Buca di Beppo, which runs about 90 Italian eateries, is the only Olo customer so far to publicly say it will use Amazon Restaurants.
The $1.5 trillion US food market is split roughly between groceries and restaurants. Food deliveries appeal to Amazon because of the frequency of orders, putting it in constant contact with shoppers and helping it collect valuable data about their preferences even if they don’t make much, if any, money on individual transactions.
Amazon began a one-hour restaurant delivery service in Seattle in 2015 and has been expanding it to other cities around the country. The service appeals largely to mom-and-pop shops that can benefit from exposure to Amazon customers and its delivery expertise, but it hasn’t attracted many chains.

Amazon Restaurants
The deal with New York-based Olo, which counts Shake Shack Inc. founder Danny Meyer as an investor, could bring fast-food restaurants like Chipotle, Five Guys and Wingstop to the Amazon Restaurants delivery service. Olo provides the technology platform to publish menus and take orders while Amazon arranges the deliveries. Olo launched a new product called Rails that makes it easier for restaurants to take delivery orders from Amazon and other third-party services, according to Noah Glass, the company’s CEO.

‘Supermarkets need to get sleekier in Amazon era’
Bloomberg

The key to surviving Amazon.com Inc.’s grocery push? Making sure traditional supermarkets are still exciting places to visit. That’s the message from Dick Boer, chief executive officer of Royal Ahold Delhaize NV, the grocery giant that owns Stop & Shop, Hannaford and Food Lion.
Boer estimates that as much as 15 percent of grocery purchases will move online by 2025, but that means most customers will still visit stores—especially for fresh items like meat and produce. To make Ahold’s stores more enticing, they may add restaurants and other gathering spots, he said.
“We have to make the store more exciting,” Boer said. “The shopping environment needs to be easier, less complex and more entertaining.” Ahold has more than 2,000 brick-and-mortar stores along the East Coast, but it’s confronting Amazon online.
Amazon’s $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods has roiled the grocery industry and reverberated through the food world.