Amazon expands grocery offering and makes $1bn investment in career programme

The retail giant made a raft of announcements at its Delivering the Future event in Dartford, Kent, today (June 4), including the unveiling of grocery expansion and investment in careers.

Customers in select areas of London can now order fresh groceries with their same-day delivery orders in a “significant grocery expansion” according to Amazon.

Customers can buy fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, seafood, dairy, bread, and frozen food, alongside a range of products already available for Same-Day Delivery across cupboard staples, household essentials, fashion, and electronics.

It is first available in parts of central and east London, with plans to reach other postcodes and areas across the country in the next few months.

Amazon UK country manager John Boumphrey said: “We’re focused on making grocery shopping easier and faster for customers, with low prices on millions of items.

“Customers can now add fresh groceries to their regular Amazon orders in a single basket and have everything delivered the same day. Whether it’s fresh ingredients with a new cookbook, or milk and tea bags with a new kettle, you can place an order in the morning and have it delivered by the time you get home.”

Amazon said its “Everyday Essentials” category, made up of groceries and household items, now represents around a third of items ordered on Amazon.co.uk, growing nearly twice as fast as other areas of the business.

Investing in the future

Another announcement made at the event was that Amazon is making a $1bn global investment in its Career Choice programme to help hundreds of thousands of current operations employees prepare for future careers.

It also pledged to quadruple its Supported Internship programme to help get one thousand young people with autism and learning disabilities into work by 2030.

The investment is part of the company’s $2.5bn “Future Ready 2030” pledge, teaching people skills as AI and automation become more embedded into workspaces.

Over 300,000 employees around the world have participated in Career Choice since 2012, including more than 30,000 in the UK.

Amazon’s $1bn commitment forms plans to upskill another 500,000 employees globally, and double the number of Career Choice participants in the UK.

The programme will be refocused around the qualifications and career pathways that are most in demand in the 14 countries where it is currently live, including cybersecurity, software development, logistics, renewable energy, and mechatronics.