It’s a race to the finish for e-retail, as Google competes with Amazon to see which company can efficiently expand same-day delivery nationwide.  At first it was your general online products that both retailers were delivering, but now same-day grocery appears to be the new, simultaneous pursuit.

Google hasn’t been in the running for fresh food same-day grocery until this week and has announced that it will be testing it later this year.  This will be a first for Google Express, delivering foods like fruits and vegetables.  The service will begin testing in will be the San Francisco Bay Area, which has been the common trial site for a number of web-based and physical store retailers.  It will be partnering with large grocery store chains like Whole Foods and Costco.

In other cities, like Atlanta, Whole Foods utilizes a Same-Day Courier to deliver foods bags and volume orders to businesses for a variety of in-house events.  These are big grocery stores that have the volume, and all they need is the demand to match, which Google will provide.  Wal-Mart offers same-day delivery in several US cities, including free same-day service in Canada to aggressively maintain a level of market share against Amazon Canada.  Since the retail leader is performing last-mile deliveries for its’ products, same-day grocery delivery makes sense, especially with its’ neighborhood market stores.

The idea is for a retailer to be close enough to shoppers physically, as they are online–being in arms’ reach of a customer’s door step and have the ability to respond when they place their order.  Google gains the reach to customers that it needs with its’ partners for grocery delivery.  It doesn’t have the physical store locations, however, Whole Foods and Costco does.  The short radius to deliver food items is even more critical than general household goods, electronics, and clothes.  Food has to be delivered within a few hours for it to be worth it to a hungry customer.

Google’s reason for deeper expansion into same-day grocery delivery is simple–AmazonFresh.  Amazon’s same-day grocery delivery service that is available in Seattle, Los Angeles and others, which more than likely will expand even more.  Free same-day service is now in Seattle and California.  More cities are set to be added, such as San Francisco Bay Area, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Phoenix, Philadelphia,  San Diego, Tampa Bay, Washington DC, New York, and Atlanta.

Retailers are moving same-day delivery into being a part of everyday consumer living.  Any online business seeking to compete will probably have to engage in some level of last-mile delivery in the future.  1-800 Courier is a Seattle Courier that retailers can partner with to implement a same-day program that will last, even for groceries.

Reference:  8.18.15,www.cnet.com, Richard Nieva, Google to test same-day grocery delivery service