How to Order Groceries with Amazon Alexa

Have you ever used Amazon’s Alexa to book a ride with Uber? We know it’s kind of strange, but it is a thing. And now, whether you have an Echo device in your home or you want to use Alexa to order groceries, you can help your favorite retailer sell more stuff.

Ordering Groceries Made Easy with Amazon Alexa

Have you ever ordered something on Amazon, only to discover that your groceries were delivered the next day? That’s right, in order to take advantage of Amazon’s Prime Now service, you must order your groceries ahead of time, but they can’t be delivered until the following day. But now, thanks to Amazon’s Alexa, you don’t even have to leave the house to order your groceries or anything else.

If you want to know how to order groceries with Amazon Alexa, here are the following steps that you should follow:

  • For first-time users, download the Amazon Alexa app. If you are one of the few who doesn’t own an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot device and want to start using the voice-activated assistant with your Amazon account, here is how you can do so. First, you will need to download the Alexa app to your iPhone or Android device, which you can find in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
  • Practice saying the magic word to Alexa. Amazon just announced new hardware and software features at its annual developers’ conference, and one of the most exciting is the Alexa voice assistant. On its own, the Echo smart speaker is capable of performing a lot of tasks, but it’s now adding a new skill that can be used to order groceries. Users will be able to say, “Alexa, order a Coke” or “Alexa, order pizza.” They can also use it to buy items from third-party retailers, such as Target or Walmart.
  • After every “What else?” from Alexa, place more items in the cart. Amazon has made the process of ordering groceries with its Alexa assistant more streamlined. After completing the grocery list, Alexa will repeat the list of items until you have them all in your cart. But hey, if you don’t have time to list all the groceries, Alexa can do that for you as well.
  • Be specific with the product that you are ordering. Amazon’s Alexa bot can do all sorts of things: turn you lights on and off, order an Uber, tell you the weather, play your favourite songs, or even tell you how much you like a song. But you may be surprised to learn how it also integrates with Whole Foods, the grocery chain that’s one of Amazon’s top partners. When you start your Alexa shopping session, you’re prompted by Amazon to select for “chicken” — but instead of the default chicken you probably selected when you first set up Alexa, it’s actually a junior-sized roast-beef rotisserie chicken.
  • Select the quantity. If you’ve ever tried to order a product from Amazon with your voice, no doubt you’ve been curious about the process. Suppose you’ve ever used Alexa, the voice assistant built into most Amazon Echo devices. In that case, you can now pick a quantity, change an item, or delete an entry as one of the steps on how to order groceries with Amazon Alexa. Suppose you want to add a tobacco item to your cart, and you mention “golden virginia 50g“, the exact item will be added to the cart instead of some random tobacco product with a different quantity. The feature is limited in scope, but it’s nice to see Amazon expanding its capabilities in this area.
  • Use the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” option. If you check out a product on Amazon or other sites, and the option to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” the product comes up, you’ve probably thought that it’s a great idea. You’re probably right. To be honest, I was taken aback that Amazon didn’t do something as simple as this with the Alexa Echo Buttons right out of the box. As with the Echo, the new Alexa Grocery List is a fairly simple tool that allows you to ask Alexa to request items from your home grocery list and then has the list saved to the cloud so that you can access it from anywhere via your smartphone or tablet. It’s a great solution that’s just been missing from the initial device sale.
  • View the items and the subtotal on the retailer’s cart page before you complete your checkout. You can get a list of your groceries through Alexa and check them off as you buy them. You can also add an item to your digital queue by saying, “Alexa, add _____ to my grocery list.” The list appears on your Alexa app, and you can switch to the Amazon app to view the list, add items, and check them off.

Choose your products, and Alexa will place the order for you. The problem is that you can only place orders for the items on your Amazon Prime account. That limits your grocery choices to what’s on Amazon Prime. And since you can only place orders for one item at a time, you’ll have to place another separate order for that item if you want to add a third item to your order. It’s a bummer-especially if you’re used to placing more than one order for different items.