Later this year, Google will begin testing a delivery service for groceries and fresh food in two cities in the United States according to a post on Bloomberg. This actually step up the competition with online retailers such the newly start-up Instacart Inc. and the biggest online retail store, Amazon.
According to an article on The Verge, it is the aim of Google Express to offer fresh foods and groceries for delivery in two U.S. cities, beginning with San Francisco. The company will have a partnership with Costco and Whole Foods on the said delivery service. Google Express has already offered boxed foods. Nevertheless, this service will be Google's first time to offer items such as fresh vegetables and fruits.
Brian Elliott, Google Express's General Manager, said: "The trial will begin in San Francisco and another city which already delivers merchandise including dry foods to customers." In an interview, Elliott said that, "For a lot of our merchants that have been successful with this, we're not representing the whole store today. It's in our incentive, as well as the merchant's incentive, for us to help customers get the full store delivered to them."
Because Google aims to drive in more traffic to its websites, the company is now beginning to invest in delivery services for both private residences and businesses. This places Google in more direct competition with Amazon. A report in April revealed that the e-commerce giant was in fact the lowest-cost among rivals in New York. In addition, the company is expanding next-day deliveries in the Midwest for more than twenty-five million customers in places like Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana. Services are also offered in Chicago and Manhattan with Kohl's Corp., Walgreen Co. and other retailers.
According to an article on Bloomberg, Elliott said: "The fresh-food trial, including fruits and vegetables, is part of a move away from making deliveries from warehouses, which can add complexity and requires refrigeration. If I've got to pay someone to drive the product from point A to point B, the bigger the basket size, the more revenue I've got to offset that cost."