📦 Why George Nott asked me why Amazon's jumping into 30-minute grocery deliv...
By Matt Anderson · February 3, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
📦 Why George Nott asked me why Amazon's jumping into 30-minute grocery delivery Amazon Now.... NOW?
My answer is on the article below for The Grocer!
Quick commerce burned billions proving the model. Gorillas, Getir, Zapp – they all died building demand, infrastructure and unit economics simultaneously.
Amazon just waited. Watched them educate customers. Watched them fail.
Then walked in with something none of them had: millions of existing UK customers already in the app.
Here's what makes this different:
Amazon realised they were paying Fresh retail overheads to run what should've been dark stores. So they shut them.
The M&S partnership that could have changed everything:
Remember when M&S walked away from Amazon back in 2014? They spent
£150m to "own the car rather than rent it" and built their own ecommerce platform instead.
But M&S had something Amazon desperately needed then and needs even more now: hundreds of stores perfectly positioned as micro-fulfilment hubs across every UK suburb and high street.
Imagine if that partnership had evolved instead of ended.
M&S locations as Amazon dark stores. Percy Pigs delivered in 30 minutes. Flowers & Food Hall essentials arriving before your dinner guests. Premium positioning with local density already built and paid for.
Instead, M&S went all-in with Ocado.That decision looks more expensive with every year that passes.
Can Amazon succeed where others failed?
The structural advantages are real:
Demand density from day one – no cold start problem.
Infrastructure already built – local nodes, routing tech, courier networks.
Multi P&L cross-subsidy – thin grocery margins don't matter when you're making it back through Prime subs, Sponsored Products, and the wider basket that follows.
But here's what they still need to prove: enough profitable missions per micro-catchment to cover courier costs at scale.
Should Deliveroo and Just Eat be worried?
About grocery? Materially, yes.
They've trained customers to expect 20-30 minute grocery drops from Tesco, Co-op, Sainsbury's. Amazon's threatening that frequency in the highest-value mission.
But restaurants are still structurally owned by those platforms. Amazon Now is essentials, not hot food.
Yet.
The real game Amazon's playing isn't about competing on speed.
It's about resetting what "normal" feels like.
Once customers expect milk and nappies in 30 minutes from the same app they use for everything else, next-day starts feeling slow.
And whoever wins grocery frequency wins the customer's weekly rhythm.
For brands, this changes everything. Being ranged in Amazon's "Now" assortment becomes the new Prime-eligible signal.
Speed becomes the new shelf space.
What's your take – is this Amazon finally getting quick commerce right, or just another expensive experiment?