Fast online delivery grows faster locally
At five months pregnant and with her husband out of town on business, College Park’s Katie Miller opted for an online order instead of a trip to the grocery store.
She keyed a short list of laundry detergent and a few other items into Amazon Prime Now, and then sat back and occasionally scanned her mobile phone until the order arrived two hours later.
Fast online delivery is getting faster in Central Florida, with more internet-based retailers delivering in a few days or hours. Consumer experts say customers now expect a few clicks on their phone to result in quick delivery for everything from groceries to gardening tools.
“I didn’t even have to open the door; he just left it out front for me, and I said, ‘Thank you,’ through the door,” said Miller, a dentist who works in Orlando’s Thornton Park.
A growing number of businesses are stepping into the market. Last week a new service called Parlor and Pantry launched in Central Florida to sell locally produced goods. In recent years, services in Central Florida have started to deliver ready-to-prepare meals and bring food from restaurants to customers’ homes.
Internet retailing consultant Tom Caporaso said new technologies have opened a new frontier for fast-delivery services. Thousands of for-hire drivers are helping, too.
Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Commerce in Rocky Hill, Conn., said big retailers such as Amazon and Wal-Mart have been the most aggressive. Amazon’s Prime membership program has about 54 million U.S. customers, according to a January report from Consumer Intelligence Retail Partners.
And last week Wal-Mart announced a new program called Shipping-Pass to offer two-day shipping to subscribers for $49 a year.
Amazon’s one-day shipping program launched near downtown Orlando last year and has since spread to most of Central Florida. Amazon’s one- or twohour shipping program started May 10 with only Orange County and Kissimmee ZIP codes. Amazon spokeswoman Nina Lindsey said it will likely expand in the
coming months.
Prime Now has a $20 minimum per order for free two-hour delivery. One-hour delivery has an $8 charge.
Winter Park graphic designer Erin Fonzi Denton started using Amazon’s Prime Now two-hour delivery service as soon as it launched in the area two weeks ago.
“I use the same-day shipping frequently to purchase things I might typically buy from Wal-Mart or Target,” Denton said. “We
only use Amazon because of the deal we get with fast shipping. If an item is not on Prime shipping, I actually go out and try to buy it somewhere local instead of paying for shipping.”
Locally, new businesses are trying to find the niches where Amazon and Wal-Mart aren’t competing.
Parlor and Pantry is a startup from UCF graduate Richie Frost to connect local businesses to customers. Among its 30 vendors are a beauty-goods shop in Winter
Garden and a caramel maker in Indialantic.
Because of its Central Florida focus, Frost said customers usually get items shipped to them within a few days, enabling it to compete with two-day shipping programs.
“It serves as an opportunity for local vendors that are limited to farmers markets or even a brickand-mortar store,” Frost said.
Wildflower Beauty by Jessica owner Jessica Collins said she signed up to be with Parlor and Pantry even though she already uses online service Shopify. Online sales of her homemade goods have grown to about 15 percent of her business, with the rest coming from her boutique in Winter Garden.
“I think the whole concept of Parlor and Pantry is awesome, keeping it local and building an online shopping place,” she said.
Collins tries to get online orders shipped in one or two days to keep up with high expectations of customers, she said. Parlor and Pantry takes a 10 percent commission on sales.
Dinner delivery service Farm-Haus launched in 2014 and has grown to hundreds of customers, said co-founder Brittany Lyne. It delivers meals from downtown Orlando to Winter Park, often using local shops and bakeries for ingredients.
Customers can make their orders as late as 3 p.m. Pickup is free, and delivery costs $3 plus a tip for the driver.
“Life is unpredictable, so people like the convenience of ordering something in the afternoon and having it show up at their home that night,” Lyne said.
For the past few years, Miller, the dentist who lives in College Park, has also used a national service called Blue Apron that delivers dinner ingredients to her home. For household goods, she usually went to the grocery store. But having tried Amazon’s two-hour delivery service, she said she’s hooked.
“With a baby coming in a few months, I’m sure I’ll be using it a lot more,” she said.