Dive Brief:

• Amazon Prime Now has partnered with Fexy Media, owner of Serious Eats and other food culture and recipe sites, to allow shoppers to add recipe ingredients to their Prime Now carts for home delivery, according to a news release.
• Special sponsored recipes on Fexy’s top sites, Serious Eats and Simply Recipes, will feature Amazon Prime Now “Buy” buttons that eligible shoppers can click to add ingredients to their carts. Prime Now’s site will also feature the recipes and allow customers to buy related ingredients.
• Fexy’s eight food sites receive 23 million monthly visits, and Simply Recipes and Serious Eats are the top two food sites for millennials, according to comScore.

Dive Insight:

For years, grocers have provided shoppers with recipes, tips and other content meant to inspire creative dishes and bigger baskets. Now, with the growth of e-commerce and online technology, retailers are narrowing the space between this content and the point of purchase.

Last month, Harris Teeter launched a special recipes site that customers can use to create custom shopping lists. The Dinner Daily, meanwhile, creates weekly dinner recipes for budget-conscious shoppers using their preferred grocery stores.

On the e-commerce side, Door to Door Organics recently launched a tool that suggests recipes based on the items shoppers have placed in their basket. Customers can view the recipes while they shop, and add any items they need to complete the meal.

With this new partnership, Amazon Prime Now, which offers one- and two-hour delivery in more than 30 U.S. cities, has a similar opportunity to integrate meal planning and purchasing. The service, like other similar efforts, capitalizes on the growing demand for inventive, convenient meals. It’s the same demand that meal kits have capitalized on — though that industry has notably struggled with profitability.

Can shoppable recipes like this match the value of meal kits? Ingredients aren’t pre-portioned out, meaning shoppers have to buy the entire bottle, box or jar, even if all they want is a small amount. However, the ease of purchase is a plus, and the new tool can drive trial of new products and help Amazon build larger baskets.

If Amazon Prime Now’s promotion with Fexy is successful, it could open the door to further partnerships for the online retailer as well as Whole Foods. Along with other promotions like it that are cropping up, it could also point to a future where most food-related content includes a “buy” option.