WITH a growing worldwide trend towards home-delivered fresh goods, 2016 is bringing about changes to how some consumers access their food and grocery requirements.

Traditional supermarket and speciality shop purchasing models are facing competition, both here and overseas from order-and-pay apps, third-party online ordering and home delivery services.

Even traditional retail supermarkets like Woolworths and Coles are rapidly growing their online shopping and delivery businesses.

Examples of tech-driven food delivery include Google and Amazon, which have both recently entered the grocery delivery sector, and also UberEats, which focuses on high-speed delivery from restaurants to local residents in Toronto, Paris and parts of the US. If these programs gain momentum, similar applications might be seen in Australia, commentators say.

Tech giant Google is now delivering fresh produce and other perishable goods to consumers in parts of the US. Deliveries occur through its Google Express platform, a delivery service which started in San Francisco in 2013.

Until now the service has only handled non-perishable grocery items. But according to technology website Tech Times, Google will now be partnering with US grocery retailers Whole Foods, Costco, Smart, Final Stores and Vicente’s Supermarkets in order to deliver a wide range of grocery items including perishables like meat. Deliveries will only occur in Los Angeles and San Francisco to begin with.

The items will be delivered on the same day that they are ordered and customers will be given a two-hour time-frame in which the groceries should be delivered. Customers can either pay US$5 per delivery, or pay a Google Express membership fee of US$95.

Google will be competing against a number of other companies in the US which already deliver groceries, including Amazon.

Source: Wileytalk, Originally published in Tech Times.com