> You get free same day delivery. Amazon just greatly saved on last mile delivery costs.

I'm under the impression this is something they're really trying to optimize right now. Not sure if it's everywhere but where I live in Cincinnati, Amazon is now operating their own courier service for normal Prime deliveries piggybacking on top of Prime Now drivers.

When you place an order (on regular Amazon.com) you don't necessarily know whether it will come from UPS, FedEx, an Amazon courier, etc. The Amazon couriers don't seem to know that it's not a Prime Now order and that the delivery time isn't known in advance to the customer like it is with Prime Now, as they show up midday and call you (from an unknown number) anticipating you'd be at home and asking you to let them in the gate.

One unexpected problem that emerges here is that the standard delivery service courier for a route is regular and that one person can be given a gate key; much harder to solve that with dozens or hundreds of couriers.

I'm seeing this where I live too, near Boston. Many of my Amazon deliveries have been coming in white Amazon vans for a little while now. I still get things from UPS occasionally but it's increasingly those white Amazon vans.

I haven't seen official Amazon vans -- they're using normal people's cars here.

Hannafords has a place an order and pick it up model. Anecdotally, based on my local store, hardly anyone uses it. I suspect it's a narrow niche where people are happy to order on their computer but want to save a few $$ on delivery.

Amazon has it on trial already: https://www.amazon.com/afx/nc/aboutpickup

Not for me either, but not everyone wants or can have groceries and/or packages sitting on their porch all day.

Fair enough. Being able to swing by a store and pickup a pre picked order at a specific time probably has value for some. So likely does not having to drag kids around a store.

Mainers checking in?

I haven't used it yet, but I just went to their website. I picked the store that I pass on my way home from work. Next available pickup is tomorrow at noon. They gotta go same day if they want people to use it. That or it's popular at this particular store, who knows.

They're pretty common in Massachusetts as well. Agreed. Need to be able to place order at lunchtime and pick up on the way home.

Just wait for Market Basket to do it. Everyone will follow.

We got a Market Basket in Maine I think 2 years ago - in Biddeford. No joke, you'd think it were Six Flags with the traffic it gets on the weekends.

I mostly like Market Basket. Prices are good and around me they upgraded a couple stores that were smaller and the worse for wear. They carry things other stores don't. On the other hand bread and fish particularly tend to be weak.

We got a few Wegmans in Massachusetts, same thing. It's crazy on weekends.

Personally, I've tried many:

- Local supermarket (pickup and delivery)

- Amazon Fresh

- Services like BlueApron

BlueApron is a WAY better value, IMO. This is where I see the future being. It's fun, healthy (very), promotes sustainability, is fairly cost-effective (once you consider they deliver it as part of the cost) and is worry-free.

Shopping on Amazon still means I have to shop. Might as well take 5-10 minutes and go to the store :)

These Amazon warehouses would be full of commingled, melamine-based fake food[1] that no one wants.

I personally also strongly dislike going to the Whole Foods stores in my area.

[1] Plausible scenario based on dozens of comments on HN

I'm closer to Whole Foods' nearest distribution center than an actual Whole Foods. The nearest Whole Foods is almost 40 miles away.

If this works out for Amazon, I wouldn't be surprised to see Walmart try and buy Trader Joe's. They own Aldi, which has made a big push to compete with Walmart's reach outside cities. The nearest Aldi is closer than Walmart, and that's already not far away.

You've got your Aldis mixed up. Aldi Nord owns Trader Joe's (not the other way around). Aldi stores in the US are Aldi Süd. The two are separate companies, Aldi Nord serves the North of Germany and Aldi Süd the South. Their international expansions are separate as well. Here's a handy map (Aldi Nord in blue): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Aldi_wor...

The line dividing Germany into Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd territory — https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Aldi_equ... — is called the "Aldi equator". We sometimes jokingly call it Germany's most important dividing line post-reunification :)

tl;dr Aldi and Trader Joe's are (theoretically) in competition, and neither owns the other. The other Aldi owns Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi Nord; Aldi US is owned by Aldi Süd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi#Geographic_distribution

Walmart has ~4500 (US) stores already. Aldi is expanding rapidly but has far fewer than that.

The two Aldi locations I drive past are both located less than a mile from the nearest Walmart locations (I expect they do a fair amount of piggybacking).

The purchase doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me. I guess the most sensible thing is that they see the stores being located by the best populations to start out doing food deliveries for (affluent, so they can charge higher prices while they figure out how to do it).

Walmart has a pickup service. They keep experimenting with rapid delivery but people don't really want to pay much for it.

After a few initial hiccups, my wife is sold on Walmart's grocery pickup service. For short-range delivery, they are also experimenting with "terrestrial drones"[1] which I have seen around town once or twice.

1. http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/different-kind-drone-ro...

The premium of rapid delivery was a sticking point going back to the dot bomb era. A lot of people want rapid delivery (though admittedly only a subset want to order groceries online). But it's a premium service and a whole lot fewer want to pay for it.

Both Aldi and Trader Joe's are private and can avoid these entanglements.

This deal was more about corporate politics and shareholder drama than anything else.

It's the other way around. Aldi owns Trader Joe's.