Dive Brief:

• Amazon Fresh customers can now slot weekly grocery pickup and delivery orders up to a week in advance with the company’s new Recurring Reservations feature, Amazon confirmed in an email Wednesday. 
• Customers can further customize their recurring orders with Amazon’s Repeat Items feature, which automatically adds their favorite items into their carts. 
• This scheduling feature is the latest way Amazon is leveraging its omnichannel strength to revamp its grocery business. 

Dive Insight:

Amazon’s Recurring Reservations feature, available to nearly 1,300 cities and towns across the U.S., aims to make the shopping experience more convenient for consumers, said Kim Kornfeld, an Amazon spokesperson, via email.

The new feature allows customers to have their preferred pickup or delivery time automatically reserved each week. Users can select their day and time up to seven days in advance, and they will receive reservation notifications two days and then an hour before the reservation expires in order to keep their preferred time, the announcement noted.

Payment is required only when shoppers are ready to check out, and customers can modify or cancel their orders anytime, “no obligations,” per the email. 

 Customers can add items at any point before an Amazon gig worker begins picking the groceries. With Amazon’s Repeat Items feature, customers can control the quantity and frequency of each item they want automatically added to their weekly cart. 

“For example, customers can get milk once a week, or six apples every two weeks. They’ll be automatically added to their cart on their schedule,” Kornfeld said in a statement. 

The new scheduling feature follows Amazon Fresh’s grocery revamp, which got underway last summer with an in-store refresh as well as expansions to online access. In November, Amazon started offering grocery delivery and free pickup to non-Prime members in all markets where its Amazon Fresh stores and online services operate. The company said at the time it would do the same for Whole Foods Market to shoppers who aren’t Prime members. 

Amazon also began testing a grocery subscription program for $9.99 per month for its Prime members in select markets, offering customers unlimited free delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods on orders over $35 and unlimited 30-minute pickup regardless of order size.