Amazon has launched a recruitment effort for its new rapid delivery service Amazon Now, tempting would-be couriers with the opportunity to earn up to £15 an hour.
Amazon launched the rapid grocery service – offering thousands of food products and household essentials for delivery in 30 minutes or less – last week.
The service is initially being tested in select postcodes in Southwark in southeast London, but the company plans to roll out further in the coming months. Orders are prepared in micro-fulfilment centres – so-called dark stores – and couriered to customer’s doorsteps.
While rival supermarket rapid grocery offerings, such as Tesco Whoosh, Sainsbury’s Chop Chop and Morrisons Now, have expanded by leveraging the courier networks of third parties such as Uber Direct, Deliveroo Express, Just Eat Go and Stuart, Amazon will not be doing so.
Amazon confirmed to The Grocer Amazon Now riders will be employed under its Amazon Flex model.
On the Amazon Flex website and app, the company has launched a new ‘delivery type’ for would-be Now riders to sign up to. It requires the rider has a street-legal battery-operated e-bike with an insulated backpack or cargo box with minimum internal dimensions of 55cm by 26cm by 36cm, “that can securely hold at least 15kg of packages”.
They’ll also require their own public liability and personal accident insurance.
Unlike riders for many of the aggregator apps, which work on a ‘gig economy’ basis, Flex riders delivering for Now will chose ‘blocks’ to set hours to work.
“For Amazon Now delivery blocks, your total earnings will vary depending on how many deliveries you complete,” Amazon says on the Flex rider website. “Since we know your time is valuable, you also earn for the time spent waiting for your next delivery within the scheduled block time as part of the block minimum payment.”
The 30-minute delivery time of the new Now service is the fastest Amazon has offered in the UK, and brings it in line with the delivery time of aggregator apps like Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats, which have expanded in recent years into grocery and non-food retail.
“It’s the latest example of our commitment to faster delivery, building on the millions of items we already deliver the same or next day to customers across the UK,” John Boumphrey, UK country manager of Amazon, said of the offering.
This week, Amazon announced it is to close all Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores in the US, converting various locations to Whole Foods Market stores.
The decision follows an announcement by the company in September that it was to close all 19 of its UK Amazon Fresh physical convenience stores, the decision coming less than five years after it opened the first in Ealing, which was the company’s first physical retail site outside North America.
“While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” the company said in a statement.
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