**The 30-Minute Grocery Land Grab**

Your milk is in a race against the clock.

Amazon Now is expanding its 30-minute delivery for perishable foods, household essentials and electronics, aiming to reach tens of millions of people in 2026. DoorDash just teamed up with Empire Company Limited, adding over 1,000 stores across Canada. That deal spans 12 grocery banners, including Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, FreshCo, Farm Boy and Longo’s, with delivery in under 60 minutes on average across Canada’s five largest cities.

Ahold Delhaize USA is also widening its Uber Eats partnership, bringing nearly 2,000 retail locations like Food Lion, Giant Food and Stop & Shop onto the marketplace in the Northeast US and Mid-Atlantic US. Amazon is pushing on another front too, launching grocery delivery for business customers in more than 2,300 cities.

The backdrop is clear. Online grocery sales are projected to grow at an 11.6% CAGR from 2026 to 2028. In-store crawls at 0.6%. Online is expected to hit 25.5% of total grocery spending by 2028. About 94% of consumers already shop both online and in-store. And 80% of online grocery volume comes from shipped and delivered orders. Order-to-delivery times have fallen by roughly half since 2018. On DoorDash, 25% of monthly active users engaged with grocery, convenience, alcohol and retail in December 2025.

Why it matters. Speed is becoming the new shelf space. If your brand is not built for 30-minute delivery, it risks being invisible in the fastest-growing part of the basket. The winners will design for the algorithm, the last mile and the impulse tap, not just the endcap.