Amazon Business adds same-day fresh groceries, raising convenience stakes for Target

Amazon Business widened the competition for convenience by adding fresh groceries to same-day orders in more than 2,300 U.S. cities and towns, a move that puts fresh food, office supplies and breakroom staples in the same checkout flow. Business Prime members can get free same-day delivery on grocery orders over $25 in most areas, and Amazon said the rollout answers one of customers’ top requests for a simpler way to order fresh groceries alongside the items they already use to run operations.

For Target, the significance is operational, not just promotional. Same-day fulfillment already accounts for two-thirds of Target’s digital sales, and the retailer said same-day delivery powered by Target Circle 360 grew more than 30% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and more than 35% in the first quarter of 2025. Drive Up usually brings items to a guest’s vehicle within about two hours, which means store teams are being measured on the kind of speed and reliability Amazon is now extending into fresh grocery buying for business customers.

The overlap matters because Amazon’s highlighted categories, dairy, produce, baked goods, frozen foods and breakroom staples, are the same kinds of items that can expose weak points in inventory accuracy, picking accuracy and freshness standards. A guest who expects a fast delivery window does not care whether the bottleneck is on the sales floor, in the backroom or in the fulfillment workflow. If the item is unavailable, substituted poorly or late, the service promise breaks down. That is the pressure Target teams are likely to feel most, especially in stores balancing in-person traffic with digital order fulfillment.

Amazon Business is not starting from zero. Amazon first introduced Same-Day Delivery in 2015, expanded perishable grocery delivery to more than 1,000 cities and towns in August 2025, then pushed the reach to more than 2,300 cities and towns while saying it would keep expanding through 2026. Amazon has also said its broader delivery network is being built with a focus on smaller cities and rural communities, which helps explain why fresh grocery delivery is being folded into a larger logistics strategy rather than treated as a stand-alone grocery play.

Target is still leaning into speed of its own. Circle 360 members can get same-day delivery through Target and, through Shipt, from more than 100 grocers and specialty retailers without markups on those same-day orders. Target also plans to expand next-day brown-box delivery to 20 new metro areas this spring. The message for Target stores is clear: convenience is now measured by how few steps separate a need from a delivery, and that raises the bar on every order picked, packed and handed off.