Amazon is full of ideas. Some good, some bad, some even a little weird, but there’s no doubt the company never seems to run short on new business concepts.
One of these new ideas apparently has Amazon getting into the home helper business. As first reported by the Seattle Times, the company has a job posting on its website for a ‘home assistant,’ a position that would involve “working with customers each day with tidying up around the home, laundry, and helping put groceries and essentials like toilet paper and paper towels away.”
In other words, just like it sounds: a home helper.
As weird and wide-ranging as Amazon is with their moonshots, creating a home cleaning business is a bit of a stretch even for them. For that reason, it’s worth speculating (as I did over at NextMarket) about what exactly they may be up to. While there’s a good chance this may be an experiment or some form of market research, there’s an equally good chance the company is trying to create an Amazon-branded services market or a “truck roll” into the consumer’s home to help set it up on Amazon platforms like Dash.
But what if one of their ideas is to help the home CEO run their kitchen? While the list of tasks on the job posting includes things like cleaning and organizing, it doesn’t talk about cooking and with good reason: While putting away groceries is straightforward, making food requires knowledge of the unique tastes and dietary needs of a family. It also is pretty labor intensive.
Still, what if straightforward tasks like putting a pre-prepared meal in the oven became part of the portfolio of services? And, thinking higher-end, what if Amazon offered ways to match cooks with consumers in some form of home chef marketplace?
While I wouldn’t rule anything out for Amazon, I think these ideas are probably not what Amazon has in plan with its current home assistant effort. But, given the company’s constant rollout of new ideas, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Amazon’s plans for food, cooking, and the kitchen expand in the future.
