clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Bezos Confirms AmazonFresh Expansion Plans, Says Drones Are for Real

Amazon's 2013 letter to shareholders does not disappoint.

Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.

Grocery delivery fans outside of Seattle and California, rejoice: Amazon plans to expand its AmazonFresh offering beyond its current three markets, CEO Jeff Bezos confirmed in his 2013 letter to shareholders published today.

“We’ll continue our methodical approach — measuring and refining AmazonFresh — with the goal of bringing this incredible service to more cities over time,” he said in the letter.

For five years, Fresh was only available in Seattle, before the company launched the program last year in Los Angeles and, six months later, San Francisco. Several reports over the past year have said Amazon plans to expand the delivery service into 10 to 20 more new markets this year, but this may be the first time Bezos has publicly acknowledged the expansion plans.

Through Fresh, shoppers can order deliveries of groceries and hundreds of thousands of other items, from TVs to toys, that arrive either that same day or the following morning. Industry observers believe that part of Amazon’s reason for delivering groceries is that it will create enough sales volume and delivery demand to justify delivering all other Amazon merchandise within one day.

Another highlight from the letter: Drones.

“The Prime Air team is already flight testing our 5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles,” Bezos wrote, “and we are in the design phase on generations 7 and 8.”

Is it possible that drone delivery is still a marketing stunt? Sure. If so, Bezos is sticking to the script.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for Vox Recommends

Get curated picks of the best Vox journalism to read, watch, and listen to every week, from our editors.