Now arriving: an Amazon order at your doorstep in the time it takes to watch a "Cheers" rerun. The e-commerce giant has expanded the reach of its ultra-fast service delivery service Amazon Now, which brings thousands of grocery, household essentials and other items tailored for local markets to customers in about 30 minutes or less. The service is now live in cities including Atlanta, the Dallas Fort-Worth area, Philadelphia, and Seattle. It plans to expand to dozens more including Austin, Houston, Phoenix, and Denver, reaching tens of millions of customers by the end of the year. Amazon Now caters to items that "customers need urgently," according to the company, including fresh produce like vegetables, eggs, and dairy, as well as daily personal care, and electronics. The service carries a $3.99 fee for Prime members, or $13.99 for non-members, plus additional fees for orders under $15. Amazon Prime costs $14.99 per month, or $139 annually. To make 30-minute delivery feasible, Amazon uses smaller fulfillment centers strategically located close to where customers live. The expansion builds on Amazon's efforts to reduce delivery times and increase convenience for shoppers, particularly for commonly purchased grocery items — all with the goal of making a Prime membership indispensable and reinforcing the "flywheel" that investors love. In mid-March, Amazon announced one- and three-hour delivery in certain U.S. areas for over 90,000 products including everyday essentials and items typically found in a local supercenter. These delivery options are currently more widely available than 30-minute Amazon Now. The one-hour option is accessible in hundreds of cities and towns; the three-hour service covers over 2,000 locales. In August of last year, Amazon announced a broad rollout of same-day grocery delivery . On the physical grocery side, Amazon this year pulled the plug on its Amazon Fresh and Go stores and instead is leaning into the Whole Foods banner. Amazon also keeps layering additional services on top of its already massive logistics network. Just last week, Amazon launched a new business called Amazon Supply Chain Services that opens up its fulfillment network, including freight, warehousing and delivery to third-party businesses. The market has warmed to Amazon in recent weeks. The stock is up over 30% since its Iran wartime bottom on March 27, far ahead of the S & P 500's roughly 17% advance in the same period. Shares have rallied about 14% year to date, compared with the S & P 500's 8.5% run. That makes Amazon the second-best performing megacap tech stock in 2026 behind Google parent Alphabet, which is up 27%. AMZN 1Y mountain Amazon's stock performance over the past year. The faster delivery announcements, in particular, underscore Amazon's push to go directly after the spontaneous shopping trips that tend to be driven by quick, in-person stops at retailers like CVS , Walgreens, Walmart , and Target , in addition to quick food delivery services like Instacart , DoorDash and Uber . The 30-minute Amazon Now offering is especially a shot at the likes of Instacart, DoorDash and Uber. Amazon is going beyond competing on price or selection. For many online shoppers, delivery speed is the name of the game, and Amazon keeps making advancements in that arena. Over the years, Amazon has built one of the best logistics networks in the world, complete with robotics, regional fulfillment centers and last-mile infrastructure for speed. It's wisely leaning into that advantage to drive more frequent orders and become the go-to place for more kinds of purchases. That makes a Prime membership harder and harder to cancel. To be sure, Amazon has competition on same-day capabilities. Walmart remains the "early leader given its speed, value selection and controlled end-to-end experience," Wells Fargo analysts argued in a note Tuesday. Walmart provides same-day delivery, driven by its Walmart+ membership program. Its network of roughly 4,600 U.S. stores act as fulfillment centers for some online orders. In the holiday quarter, about a third of orders fulfilled from a Walmart store were delivered in less than three hours, CFO John David Rainey said in February. One feather in Amazon's cap in the rapid-delivery game is its 24/7 delivery capabilities, Wells Fargo said. However, Amazon's current assortment "falls well short" of Walmart and other omni-channel grocers including Kroger and Albertsons , the analysts argued, given their extensive networks of physical stores. Kroger has about 2,700 and Albertsons is at roughly 2,200. For its part, Amazon offers delivery through Whole Foods but its number of locations pales in comparison. Whole Foods says it has over 550 stores with plans to add 100 more in the coming years. Nevertheless, Amazon's delivery efforts are resonating. On its first-quarter earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said perishable foods made up nine of the top 10 most ordered items for same-day delivery where the service is available. Customers shopping same-day perishables build larger baskets, Jassy said, adding nearly three times as many items to their order and spend over 80% more than customers who don't. After its August rollout, Amazon's same-day delivery of perishables was available in over 2,300 cities and towns in the U.S. by year-end. The expansion of Amazon Now suggests Amazon is gaining momentum in shopping for groceries, perishables and everyday essentials, analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote to clients this week. The title of the note: "One Day We'll Say: 'Remember 2 Day Delivery? That Took Forever!'" They view Amazon Now as an additional step toward grocery being a long-term growth driver for its U.S. e-commerce business, as it takes share in the "still relatively untapped" $1.7 trillion offline grocery total addressable market. As Amazon increases its selection of items available for 30-minute delivery, Morgan Stanley analysts predicted this will drive additional usage and apply "incremental competition" to other online grocery providers. Bottom line With Amazon Now's ultra-fast delivery, the company is relying on convenience to widen its competitive moat in e-commerce. The easier Amazon makes it to get everyday items in minutes, the harder it becomes for competitors to keep up and the stickier and more valuable a Prime membership becomes. Right now, investors may be more excited by Amazon's accelerating cloud-computing growth and its broader AI narrative. There's good reason for that, given Amazon Web Services is the company's profit engine. We're thrilled by those successes, too. But the dominant e-commerce business remains a critical reason to own the stock over the long haul. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long AMZN. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
