What Is Amazon Fresh and How Does It Work?

You may have heard of Amazon.com—it’s that company that used to be for ordering books online and now has essentially taken over the world. Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, has a dizzying number of assets, including IMDb, Zappos, Twitch, Goodreads, Audible, The Wondery media network, MGM, and on and on. So, why shouldn’t it have a grocery store?

Amazon Fresh is one of the food-specific tendrils of the Amazon empire. If you’re shopping online, it requires an Amazon Prime account to use. The Amazon Fresh store is available on the Amazon website, but there are physical ones as well. You can use this map to find the store closest to you, but if you’re wondering how many Amazon Fresh stores there are, the answer is only about 23 and almost half of them are in California.

Let’s see what the folks at Amazon have to say about this service. According to their website, “Amazon Fresh is a new grocery store designed from the ground up to offer a seamless grocery shopping experience, whether customers are shopping in store or online…Customers will find a wide assortment of national brands and high-quality produce, meat, and seafood; plus, our culinary team offers customers a range of delicious prepared foods made fresh in store, every day. We’ve also introduced new ways to make grocery shopping more convenient, including Just Walk Out shopping and Amazon Dash Cart, which enable customers to skip the checkout line.”

How does Amazon Fresh work? If you’re asking about the Amazon Fresh store, you scan the QR code in your Amazon app to gain access to the store. Then you shop. Anything you pull off the shelf is automatically added to a virtual cart—and, yes, if you put it back on the shelf it comes out of the virtual cart. It’s magic. Terrifying magic. To check out, you simply scan the QR code in your app again and walk on out. Of course, you can also shop the old school way at an Amazon Fresh store and interact with real humans. But what fun would that be?

If you’re asking how does Amazon Fresh work when you’re shopping online, well, it’s very similar to any other Amazon experience. You can browse in more general categories, or search for particular items that you’re looking for. As noted above, there is a pretty wide assortment of brands and produce available. For example, let’s say you want a 16 oz bag of Fresh brand cut and peeled baby carrots. They are currently selling for $1.49 and have a rating of 4.7/5 stars based on 29,812 reviews—although one single-star review declares that they are “delicious—NOT.” First, you simply search for carrots or browse through the produce section. You find the carrots you want, then simply add them to your cart. From there, you click the “check out” button and enter your address and payment information if somehow Amazon doesn’t already have it. Soon, your carrots will be on their way to your doorstep and you can decide for yourself if they’re delicious or NOT.

Of course, keep in mind that it’s probably not the best idea to order one single item when you’re using the Amazon Fresh store because it’s just not cost effective. Also, if you do decide to use this service, be sure to give the delivery person a decent tip since they work hard to deliver food to you as soon as possible.

One other thing to note: Despite Amazon owning both Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods, they are not the same thing. You can also order food online from Whole Foods through Amazon, but you’ll have to make it a separate order from your Amazon Fresh purchase. Then after that, you can enjoy IMDb, Zappos, Twitch, Goodreads, Audible, The Wondery media network, MGM, and on and on.