Amazon Jumps Into New York's Restaurant Delivery Cage Match With Both Arms Swinging

Amazon is now offering free delivery from over 350 Manhattan restaurants via its Prime Now service. The company promises that orders placed via Prime Now will be delivered within an hour, and guests can track the progress in real time. The service does not have any extra fees or inflated pricing, so diners are paying exactly what they would in the restaurants.

Right now, the roster includes Momofuku Milk Bar, The Odeon, Empellon Taqueria, Num Pang, Porsena, Mile End Delicatessen (Noho), Blue Ribbon Chicken, and Osteria Morini. John's of Bleecker Street is also part of the program, and that restaurant has never officially offered delivery before. Amazon hopes to add more restaurants to the list soon, too. The only hitch is that you need an Amazon Prime account to use Prime Now, and that costs $99 per year. Restaurant operators end up paying a bit more to Amazon for the service compared to its delivery competitors, like GrubHub and Seamless.

Along with expanding the Prime Now restaurant service to Manhattan, today the company also announces that it will permanently waive restaurant delivery fees. Previously, the company listed the free delivery as a "limited time only" deal, but now it's baked into the service. Amazon launched its Prime Now restaurant delivery service in Seattle last summer, and it's now in 10 cities across the country.

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