Amazon stops accepting new online grocery customers amid surging demand

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Amazon will start to place new grocery supply clients on a wait record and curtail buying hours at some Whole Foods shops to prioritize orders from present clients shopping for meals on-line through the coronavirus outbreak, the corporate mentioned on Sunday.

Many buyers lately searching for to buy groceries from the Seattle-based ​e-commerce firm discovered they might not place orders on account of a scarcity of obtainable supply slots. Amazon mentioned it must relegate all new on-line grocery clients to a wait record beginning Monday whereas engaged on including capability every week.

In current weeks, it elevated the variety of Whole Foods shops providing grocery pickup ​to greater than 150 places, up from 80 beforehand.

Amazon ​additionally plans to shorten some Whole Foods shops’ hours for the general public so its staff can extra shortly fulfill on-line grocery orders, the corporate mentioned.

The strikes illustrates how the world’s largest on-line retailer, which confirmed its ambition to enter the grocery trade by buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in August 2017, is now leveraging its presence each on-line and in bodily shops to deal with excessive demand from shoppers who’re caught consuming at dwelling, with many restaurant eating rooms closed to the general public.

Amazon gives grocery supply providers Amazon Fresh and Amazon Prime Now from its personal warehouses and Whole Foods shops. It usually touts ultra-fast supply inside hours, ​with buyers in a position to decide on a supply window. Last month, Amazon briefly suspended the Prime Pantry supply service, which sells non-perishable groceries.

Amazon mentioned its on-line grocery order capability has elevated by greater than 60% through the outbreak. Some netizens who mentioned they used Amazon Prime, its $119-a-year subscription service for U.S. buyers, have nonetheless complained on social media in regards to the shortage of supply home windows.

The firm mentioned it’s hiring extra employees to broaden capability and that it plans to launch a brand new characteristic that can assist clients safe a digital “place in line” to distribute the supply home windows on a primary come, first served foundation. It additionally provided increased pay to encourage its warehouse employees to work for its grocery supply service.

Currently, Amazon runs 487 Whole Foods shops within the United States. These shops have been limiting the variety of clients allowed directly, and Amazon has mentioned it conducts every day worker temperature checks and sends masks and gloves to guard employees.

The first retailer of Amazon’s much-anticipated new grocery chain, which is scheduled to open this yr in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, has been briefly transitioned right into a warehouse for on-line orders, the corporate mentioned.

Still, some staff at Whole Foods and Amazon warehouses have protested the corporate shouldn’t be doing sufficient to guard them, in demonstrations that gained consideration from lawmakers and unions. Over 50 Amazon achievement facilities and a number of other Whole Foods shops had confirmed COVID-19 instances, in accordance with a number of experiences.

“We nonetheless count on the mix of restricted capability on account of social distancing and buyer demand will proceed to make discovering out there supply home windows difficult for patrons,” Stephenie Landry, vice chairman of Grocery at Amazon, wrote in a blogpost. “If you’ll be able to accomplish that safely, we kindly encourage our clients who can to buy in-person.”

The publish Amazon stops accepting new on-line grocery clients amid surging demand appeared first on The Himalayan Times.

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