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Amazon starts alcohol deliveries to Prime Now customers in Twin Cities

Amazon starts alcohol deliveries to Prime Now customers in Twin Cities

It teams with Surdyk’s in Mpls. to deliver beer, wine and liquor in the Twin Cities

 

Star Tribune

By Evans Ramstad

July 29, 2016

Amazon.com Inc. started delivery of beer, wine and liquor in the Twin Cities Thursday in partnership with Surdyk’s Liquor & Cheese Shop, a fixture in northeast Minneapolis for eight decades.

 

By noon, the flow of orders had topped expectations and Amazon asked Surdyk’s whether it could expand a limit Amazon had set of 40 per hour.

 

“I said yes,” said Melissa Surdyk, a fourth-generation member of the founding family. “We have the people to help, and we’ve been able to pick [orders] quickly.”

 

Two-hour deliveries are free to members of Amazon’s $99-a-year Prime membership program. The company charges about $7.99 for an order delivered in one hour. Deliveries are available Monday to Saturday during Surdyk’s operating hours.

 

The fees are similar to other items in the delivery service, which Amazon calls Prime Now. It began offering the delivery service in the Twin Cities last October for groceries, household essentials and some electronics items. In a statement announcing the Surdyk’s relationship, Amazon said the most-popular items it has been delivering in the Twin Cities up to now through Prime Now have been orange juice, bananas and Haribo gummy bears.

 

When an Amazon customer places the order for Surdyk’s, the store on Hennepin Avenue is alerted and an employee picks out the items, puts them in a bag and puts an Amazon sticker and code on it. “We’ve been picking up very fast, filling them within 10 minutes,” Surdyk said. “The driver comes into the store with the code and takes the bag. We don’t even see the address at all.”

 

The companies said demand was so high that they expanded their hourly limit on Thursday.