Amazon Forms Grocery Delivery Pact With Mexico’s Jüsto

Amazon has reportedly launched a partnership with Mexican grocery delivery startup Jüsto.

As Bloomberg News reported Monday (Nov. 4), that collaboration will see Amazon offer Jüsto’s service on its Mexican eCommerce platform. Customers visiting Amazon’s Mexican site will be able to buy things like produce, meat and fish from Jüsto, which will handle deliveries.

Ricardo Weder, Jüsto’s founder and CEO, told Bloomberg that the partnership helps Amazon expand the inventory of fresh products and supermarket staples available to consumers, while giving his company greater visibility online.

“Jüsto is going to be Amazon’s produce and grocery proposal in Mexico,” Weder said. “It’s one of the few times where Amazon has left all of the client’s experience to a third party, so we’re very excited.”

The Bloomberg report noted the arrangement is tied to Amazon’s larger strategy of offering faster delivery, which the company says is helping it sell more essential items that shoppers would normally purchase from local brick-and-mortar stores.

And Amazon has been looking to expand its presence in the grocery space, the sole retail category in which it trails rival Walmart by a wide margin, PYMNTS reported in September.

As of the second quarter, Walmart owned a share of consumer grocery spending seven times the size of Amazon’s, at 20% and 2.7%, respectively, according to research from the PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Whole Paycheck Report: Walmart Holds Grocery Lead Over Amazon Despite Overall Share Declines.”

Amazon’s efforts to grow in the grocery world include new types of stores. The company recently debuted a store called “Amazon Grocery” within the same Chicago building that houses another Amazon-owned company’s location, a Whole Foods Market.

As reported here last month, the new, 3,800-square-foot, small-format store is aimed at offering shoppers a simpler way to grab “grocery top-ups” such as  coffee and grab-and-go meals during their regular trip to Whole Foods.

In addition, Amazon announced last month that it was developing its first automated micro fulfillment center at a Whole Foods store outside Philadelphia. The company says this center will let customers place orders on the Amazon app while they are shopping at a Whole Foods store, and then pick up those items at checkout minutes later.