Is Amazon destined to become the Walmart of the 21st century? Taking a page from the playbook of the brick-and-mortar behemoth, the online mega-emporium is getting ready to expand big-time into the grocery biz.
We all know how the supersized supercenters with their wide-load grocery aisles worked out for Walmart: since the first supercenter opened in 1988, the chain has become the number one grocer in the country—in effect, sticking it to the grocery biz pretty much the same way it did to discount stores decades before.
But selling lettuce and ground beef online? That involves a whole different devilish set of logistics.
There may have been a Walmart supercenter being built, like, every 10 seconds throughout the 1990s, but as NPR reports, Amazon has been testing its AmazonFresh grocery delivery service in Seattle for five years, trying to work out all the kinks. Now the company is poised to expand the service to Los Angeles (as early as next week), and then San Francisco before the end of the year. If all goes well, AmazonFresh could arrive in 40 cities by the end of 2014.
