Amazon’s stated mission is to be "Earth’s most customer centric company." And now the ambitious, humongous and increasingly ubiquitous internet-based retailer is apparently bringing another of its innovative and consumer-friendly services to our humble neck of the planet.
Get ready to have cheeseburgers drone-dropped at your doorstep in an instant, Milwaukee. Or at least delivered by drivers within the hour. Amazon Prime Now restaurant delivery looks like it’s coming here.
According to a permit filed to the Office of the City Clerk’s License Division on Wednesday, Prime Now LLC applied for a food dealer license for a large building at 4111 W. Mitchell St., about a mile south of Miller Park. OnMilwaukee confirmed the Prime Now application with the city Thursday. The address is just down the block from a Milwaukee delivery station Amazon set up in early 2016 in the commercial area called Stadium Business Park.
If this means what it appears to mean, Amazon is planning to bring its ultra-convenient fast food service to Milwaukee. We’d join the exclusive company of other trendy big cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and Columbus. Que cosmopolitan!
Introduced in September 2015, Prime Now restaurant delivery – a benefit of Amazon Prime – lets members browse menus, place orders from participating local restaurants and track the status of their delivery in real time inside the mobile app. After an order is made, Amazon drivers – in some cities, bikers – pick up the food from the restaurant and deliver it to the customer in an hour or less.
Talk about a more delicious way to spend a cold winter night watching Netflix.
Several national restaurant delivery companies already exist in Milwaukee, including Grubhub, EatStreet, Postmates and Seamless, as well as some, like The Meal Mobile, that are city-specific. Along with friends and coworkers, I’ve used those services on several occasions, and our collective consumer experience ranges from awesome to awful, largely due to inconsistency and unpredictability.
But Amazon, which is ostensibly aiming to pervade every sphere of our daily lives and may eventually be Earth’s only company, is well-positioned to surpass those competitors. Not only is it the world’s most valuable retailer, but the company is famous for its delivery speed and reliability, as well as its customer service and shopper satisfaction. Amazon also already has an advantage because of its built-in base of tens of millions of Prime members. So, yeah, Jeff Bezos’ web giant probably will be great at this, too, and it surely would be Milwaukee's gain. Users in other markets seem to be happy.
Currently, restaurant delivery is available in New York, Seattle, Dallas, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Austin, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Tampa, Orlando, Northern Virginia, Phoenix, Columbus and Portland. Amazon Prime provides two-day delivery on myriad products (read OnMilwaukee president Jeff Sherman's blog about the service here). Prime Now is even faster, allowing members to download the app and place orders for one-hour or two-hour delivery of "daily essentials and gift items," as well as restaurant meals, in select ZIP Codes.
Amazon Prime costs $99 per year, with membership including two-hour Prime Now delivery for free and one-hour delivery for $7.99. In the case of the restaurant service, there is no charge for the tasty meals that are brought within 60 minutes (with a $20 minimum). Amazon has reportedly promised not to mark up the cost of menu items, instead charging the restaurant a certain percent of each order. Tipping is optional, with the money going to the delivery driver, not the restaurant.
Last October, Amazon announced plans to build convenience stores and develop curbside pickup locations for grub, continuing its rapid extension into food service. Locally, the massive Amazon Fulfillment Center in Kenosha has helped the company expand its reach in Wisconsin.
Assuming the food dealer license is issued, Amazon Prime Now restaurant delivery could launch in Milwaukee in no time, as it has in other cities. I know I can't wait to use it to order Kopp's from my couch.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
