Amazon grocery - what’s the deal with same day delivery of perishables (and Fresh)?

Amazon made headlines late last year when they announced same day grocery delivery was expanding to over 2,300 new cities. This felt meaningful, but at the time we wrote that it was unclear what it meant or how it interfaces with Fresh, Whole Foods, and regular .com delivery. Now we're starting to get a clearer picture.

Same Day Delivery items shop just like your normal .com products with the normal Prime delivery badge. You don’t have a separate cart like Fresh or WFM, it’s just normal Amazon shopping. This option has quietly grown since last year. At the end of 2025, we reported on eggs and bananas growing 10x in search volume on Amazon. That spike is almost certainly because of this change. Amazon shuttered all physical Fresh (and Go) stores about 2 months ago. As a result, we’ve seen Fresh velocities, particularly of refrigerated items, drop a fair bit. It makes sense - you might trust the Amazon person to deliver bananas, but milk is a different level of trust and risk (sitting on your porch in the sun!). At the same time, we’ve seen significant lift in .com or “core Amazon” sales.

Sourcing isn’t super clear; Amazon may be getting product from a distributor, as some or our clients aren’t getting POs alongside their Fresh POs. We have also heard whispers of Fresh warehouses being migrated to Same Day Delivery, which continues the move toward a Big Fat Unified Amazon Grocery entity. This is changing fast. And for brands already on Fresh, we think Same Day Delivery's product mix roughly mirroring Fresh. If you’re a smaller brand looking for exposure, we haven’t seen straightforward “ins” yet - but a Launchpad program like those of the past could be coming someday.