Amazon to deliver food in four hours

AMAZON is waging war on the supermarkets with its own fresh food service – promising to deliver orders placed at lunch in time for tea.

The internet retailer, which already sells tinned and packaged groceries, will offer fruit, vegetables and meat from today as part of its Amazon Fresh service.

The move is a major assault on supermarkets – and online grocer Ocado.

Amazon Fresh will be available to customers who pay the £79 annual subscription for Amazon Prime, which offers speedy deliveries and an online TV service.

Customers can pay an extra £6.99 a month for the food service.

It will offer 130,000 goods including brands such as Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s as well as products from Morrisons, under a tie-up that was announced in February. The service will also enable customers to buy from local businesses.

Initially Amazon Fresh, which is already in some US cities, will be available in North and East London – near Amazon’s Bow distribution centre. But there are plans to expand.

Customers will be able to choose one-hour delivery slots between 7am and 11pm. Those who order by 1pm will get their food by 5pm.

This latest venture will be a blow to Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda, which have all seen sales suffer in recent years as they are undercut by discount supermarkets Aldi and Lidl.

Amazon is expected to offer produce at equivalent or cheaper prices than competitors.

In documents seen by the Daily Mail, an example basket of shopping is expected to cost £58.93, compared to £67.88 for the same products at Waitrose, or £59.90 at Asda.

Shoppers have been promised more food price cuts by Sainsbury’s as the supermarket revealed sales over the past three months were down 0.8 per cent on last year.