Amazon is doubling down on instant gratification. The company’s new ultrafast service, Amazon Now, uses networks of micro-warehouses roughly the size of a CVS drugstore to stock about 3,500 items — soap, bananas, diapers, beer, wireless earbuds — that can be picked, packed and sent to a customer’s door in 30 minutes or less. The service, already operating in parts of Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Denver, Phoenix and more than a dozen other U.S. cities, is slated to reach New York City by the end of 2026.
Prime members pay a $3.99 delivery fee for the speed; non-members pay $13.99. A $1.99 surcharge applies to any basket under $15. Amazon says the small-format hubs, which typically employ only a handful of workers, tailor their inventory to each location using artificial intelligence that analyzes local buying habits — the most common U.S. purchases so far include toothpaste, mouthwash and toilet plungers alongside more expected grocery items.
“We know that customers love speed and always have,” Beryl Tomay, Amazon’s head of transportation, told The Associated Press on Monday. “What we see customers doing, when we offer faster speeds, are they purchase more from Amazon. And Amazon becomes more top of mind for that or other types of items as well.” The company says the service first launched in India last June, where it saw Prime members triple their use of 30-minute orders, and that repeat customers in the U.S. are climbing.
The push places Amazon in direct competition with on-demand delivery platforms. DoorDash spokesperson Ali Musa said the company can deliver “over half a million grocery and retail items in under an hour across the country” by partnering with grocers and retailers, describing the relationship as additive rather than replacement. Walmart’s Express Delivery service, meanwhile, charges $10 above standard fees to guarantee arrival within an hour; CEO John Furner told analysts in February that many customers already receive items in under 30 minutes.
Independent retail analyst Bruce Winder said Amazon’s advantage is unmistakable: “What Amazon brings is their prowess in supply chain.” But other observers tempered enthusiasm with history. Brad Jashinsky, a retail analyst at Gartner, pointed to Domino’s ill-fated “30 minutes or it’s free” guarantee, which the pizza chain launched in 1984 and abandoned in 1993 after a string of crashes and lawsuits involving drivers racing to meet the deadline. “You get in trouble when you start overpromising something like that,” Jashinsky said.
Amazon emphasizes that it makes no time guarantees and that neither warehouse workers nor gig drivers will be rushed. “There’s no rushing either in our building workers or the gig workers,” Tomay said. Still, the service arrives amid rising consumer pushback — particularly from younger shoppers — who are increasingly willing to accept slower, consolidated deliveries for environmental and labor reasons. Darby Meegan, a general manager at logistics firm Flexport, said Generation Z has shown more tolerance for no-rush shipping than millennials raised on instant delivery expectations.
Sucharita Kodali, an analyst at Forrester Research, questioned the service’s cost-effectiveness, noting that 30-minute delivery likely requires dense clusters of orders from the same or adjacent apartment buildings to be profitable. Amazon says the model is still “early days” and that it will continue to watch customer behavior. “Time will tell,” Tomay said.