Amazon May Be Looking to Break Into the Takeout-Delivery Market The new service will reportedly be a part of Amazon Local and compete directly with services like Seamless and GrubHub.
By Benjamin Kabin •
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Next time you are craving a pizza, instead of calling up your local mom-and-pop shop to place your order, you may be looking to Amazon to deliver your pie.
That's right -- Amazon appears poised to make another move into the local marketplace with an upcoming takeout-delivery service to compete with companies like GrubHub and Seamless, reports say.
The new service will be a part of Amazon Local, a daily-deal service similar to Groupon and will have its initial launch on iOS in Seattle. TechCrunch first reported the news after the feature was reportedly turned on for a brief period before being taken down again.
Related: Amazon May Launch a Local Services Marketplace
The online-retail giant has also reportedly been in contact with already-established local service companies like the San Francisco-based Thumbtack, a company that connects customers to more than 60,000 service providers.
Amazon is yet to confirm the details but reports say the company is planning to expand the takeout service to other cities gradually and eventually globally, in a similar fashion to the rollout of its grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh.
Reports say Amazon is also considering expansion through acquisition. Among the companies Amazon may be considering are Peach, a local takeout service in Seattle, Maryland and Virginia and Caviar, a similar service operating in San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., New York and Boston that offers free GPS tracking on customers' orders.
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Besides being known for offering just about anything to customers, the new push into local commerce is in line with Amazon's strategy to become the go-to company for many small-business owners.
Besides providing a marketplace for entrepreneurs to sell products on, Amazon already provides a host of backend products such as Amazon Web Services, a platform with various cloud computing offerings that allows companies to scale quickly. It also recently rolled out subscription payments for startups.
Related: Amazon Will Now Manage Subscription Payments for Startups and Businesses
Earlier this month Reuters reported that Amazon also plans to launch a locals-services marketplace to compete with Yelp and Angie's List. Although services will be new territory for the retail giant, Amazon has already experimented with services like free installation for Nest thermostats.
With more than 160 million paying customers, Amazon already appears to have the client base to make its local ventures a success. Now it's just a matter of getting consumers to think about
