Amazon Prime Launches Beer and Wine Delivery in Florida

Amazon Prime Launches Beer and Wine Delivery in Florida

May 29, 2018

Amazon has finally joined the bandwagon of delivery services (including Postmates, Publix, and Instacart) already offering alcohol “on-demand” in Florida. In addition to asking Alexa for a number of other items, you can now ask her to order your packaged beer and wine. The company’s same-day delivery service, Prime Now recently announced it will now offer delivery of beer and wine to Prime account holders in Florida. However, only those in Miami and Orlando will have access to this service for now. The service officially began on May 23. Prime Now users will have the option to get beer and wine delivered within one or two hour windows. While two-hour delivery is free with a purchase of at least $35, one-hour delivery will cost users $9.99 for all orders. The service is only available between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Sundays. This means Sunday Funday will start later than usual for some. Interestingly, the service will offer a wide variety of options including 160 local and national craft types of beer, with more than 230 wine options categorized by varietal. To prevent underage possession, the person who accepts the beer or wine delivery at the door must be 21 or older and show valid ID. An interesting issue for delivery services is compliance with minimum age requirements as technically, minors under the age of 21 cannot purchase alcohol beverages. Because original account holders may not be 21 years of age and are not required to be 21 years of age to purchase other products, online retailers need to carefully consider state law and compliance with restrictions on the initial “sale” rather than just final delivery and service to minors. Amazon’s delivery service likely presents potential benefits and challenges across the beer and wine industries. This may be good news for brewers and winemakers, for example, as they will gain access to a tech-savvy audience, as Amazon Prime Now is already a widely accepted form of on-demand delivery. But does this mean that people will stop heading to popular brick-and-mortar package stores? It’s highly unlikely, especially when considering the strict delivery timeframes and the experience that some higher end package stores can provide with respect to on-site education, recommendation and customer service. Will the rest of Florida cities follow suit? Time will tell, however it’s wise to assume that Miami and Orlando will be watched very closely to see how the program fares in each city.

Tags: Global NewsAmazon Prime FloridaBeer DeliveryWine deliverySpiritus Law, formerly known as LewisFox Law,