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Their old business model was similar, but without the cameras:

https://www.schwans.com/

When I was a kid, you'd give them the house key and they would show up while you at work and put stuff in your refrigerator and freezer. It looks like they don't do that anymore.

There is nothing ... NOTHING ... in that patent that enables them to do this on a large scale, except for the automation that a computer provides (which, unfortunately, seems to make anything patentable these days). If you disagree, please call out something specific, like an actual claim in the patent, and a description of why it's something new and not just the first and most obvious solution their engineers came up with.

Well the whole aspect of the customer being able to pick groceries (etc) from a list, and drop them into a time-certain delivery slot is pretty novel if you ask me.

In no other system I am aware of does the customer have a pre-published list of when delivery slot exists at their particular residence. Everybody else says we will get there when we get there. Most don't offer the frequency of delivery that Amazon is already doing in their target areas. (Mostly Seattle for now).
Schwan's comes closest I think. But their selection is abysmal and their 14 day cycle is not how people buy groceries. (Step outside their schedule and price goes way up).

Amazon has to make their truck schedules Address Specific, and presented to to the users as a series of time-slots that Amazon can come close to guaranteeing. That's pretty novel.

Amazon has to handle your regularly scheduled grocery deliveries (arguably not that unusual, although still not common), and marry that to the Address Specific time slots. (Its the combination of these two elements that is pretty unique).

As for the order management being totally computerized, and customer manageable on line; Obviously that's not unique either.
Scheduling repeat deliveries, lots of places handle that as well, although, again, not with any precision.

I believe it is the addition of fairly precise scheduling of both re-occurring orders, (all fully user adjustable) and one-off orders, vacation holds, etc. that makes the Amazon patent fairly unique, not only TODAY, but more precisely in 2009.

Its not like scheduling Comcast to tell you they will be there between 3 and 5, (and having them show up at 7, or not at all). They know precisely what they have to do, and have everything in the truck, they don't have that many products.

Amazon has way more stuff than they could possibly put in the truck, and they have to sequence-load each truck for each route with a load that they might even have finalized until the truck pulls up to the loading dock.

And they have to put this before the user on their computer screen in an obvious and understandable way. They clearly imply drag-and-drop in their wording.

We all expected the supermarkets to come up with this. We've dreamt about it for years each time we trudge off to Safeway or Supervalue.
Nobody did it. You can't buy this service anywhere except portions of Seattle. So its pretty novel if you ask me.

Its ambitious. That it does not exist even today is pretty indicative that its unique and non-obvious. It might be considered obvious in retrospect, only if you're willing to equate a milkman to a full scale customization delivery schedule of a wide variety of grocery products, or simply assume into existence a computer system tied directly to a customer scheduled delivery schedule for almost any food item you want on a regular basis at a pre-determined time.

Like I say, Schwan's s the closest you can come. And its not even close.

Schwans http://www.schwans.com/ has delivered ice cream for a long time now.

your neighborhood UPS or Fedex delivery truck is not refrigerated.

The Schwan truck is refrigerated, but if you're not from a rural area, you might have not seen one. ;-)

Well clearly you haven't used one of these services either, because they don't deliver frozen goods.

I must have hallucinated all those Schwan's trucks.

I live in the most densely populated urban area in the whole country and I still have to either drive or take the bus to the nearest Trader Joes or Whole Foods.

Those aren't even the most serious objections. Whole Foods has the worst grocery prices in the USA. Trader Joe's, meanwhile, has slashed quality over the last couple years. We used to go there monthly, now we go maybe twice a year and buy some sesame crackers. We don't even go there for beer any more since we have a good retail distributor called Bottle Barn that sells premium 22oz beer for about $4-5.50, and has similarly lower prices on other kinds of booze as well. If you shop at either outlet you're being taken advantage of.

There's a law against food deliveries? That's odd, then these people need to go to jail immediately!

Where did you get those crazy ideas?

This system isn't like a truck you can dump food on. It's more like a series of tubes.

However, propane works great for fleet vehicles always returning to a home base. Schwan's figured it out a long time ago. Go here and slide the truck to 1974.

Basically I already try to embrace many of these services already. If I could have at least basic food supplies delivered to my doorstep for a small extra cost then I'd jump at the chance. There is a food service in my area that delivers food. It even does this in the very rural areas. It's called Schwans. Unfortunately they have a steep markup. If a company like Amazon can do something similar without the huge markup then I'm all for it.

Schwan's got it right in the U.S. They've been doing home grocery/food/meal delivery for years. When Internet popularity rolled around, they took advantage of technology to improve their business rather than to create it.

The smaller home delivery vendors have always been in this space and have expanded in the online venue. Our local dairy delivers milks, eggs, bread and now all other food products from frozen food to fresh meat and cheese has a website to order your weekly delivery. Schwann's is another company that sell frozen only but have expanded order placing to the Internet.
So these larger markets are really just cathcing up to the smaller family established businesses.

Schwans delivers frozen foods. I've been using them ever since GroceryWorks went under and have been very pleased with their product quality.

One thing I really like is my food arrives frozen. The nearest grocery store to where I live is 10-15 minutes away and frozen foods tend to defrost a bit by the time I get home due to the hot Texas sun. Melted/refrozen ice cream from the grocery store isn't very good.

Actually, it'll probably be $4 in Memphis, just because that's their rate. They'll just have a higher profit on it.

By the way, you might want to check out Schwans which does grocery delivery here in Memphis. It might not suffice for all of your needs, but it might cut down on the amount of items you have to carry on the bus.

Just trying to help.

-9mm-

Theres also Schwans they are all over, a few bucks more. They also have allot of butchers who will deliver meat if you buy in bulk, and its cheaper than the stores.

Myself, I prefer costco(warehouse store). You buy in bulk, but the cost is about 30% cheaper than the stores. Buy an executive account, and you get 2% of your money back at the end of the year.

An example, Milk is 3.60 at the normal store (3.99 online order), its 1.99 a gallon at the quickie mart, at costco its 2 for 2.70. I have a family of 6, and we drink almost a gallon of milk every 1-2 days, need to shop and save money.
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Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be surprised at how little you have. - Ernest Haskins