Corby Kummer: Amazon's Free Food Delivery Service Will Cost Workers Jobs

Subscribers of Amazon Prime — the e-commerce giant’s membership service for discounted shipping rates and streaming video content — will now receive free membership to the company’s on-demand grocery service, AmazonFresh.

According to Corby Kummer, a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Amazon’s move is the latest part of its growing effort to expand into the grocery business. Kummer said the key to Amazon’s strategy is cutting down on staff at Whole Foods, which the company acquired in 2017, to reduce operating costs and fund the delivery service.

“While they chop local jobs of people who are at cash registers or people who smile at you when you go to Whole Foods ... they can lose money hand over fist,” Kummer said. “All of your friends who are smiling at you at Whole Foods are going to be gone, because you’re buying into meal delivery.”

According to a February report from Bain & Company done in partnership with Google, 3 percent of US grocery shopping occurs online, but analysts expect the amount of online sales to triple within the next decade.

Kummer is executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute and a senior editor at The Atlantic.