Amazon Prime have announced that customers will now have the option to have food shopping delivered to their homes for free within a designated two-hour slot.

We've put together everything you need to know about this latest announcement by the online retail giant.

When did the new deal launch?

The deal launched on Tuesday, July 28 - and the tech giant is now offering its Amazon Fresh service to all of its Prime customers within 300 postcodes in and around London.

When could it be rolled out across the UK?

According to an Amazon spokesman, the new free service could be rolled out to the rest of the UK by the end of the year.

How can I get the free service?

To benefit from the new service you need to be an Amazon Prime member. Your grocery orders must also cost more than £40 in total.

Prime membership costs £79 a year or £7.99 a month, and entitles customers to free delivery on certain products, as well as access to services such as Amazon Video, Photo, Music, and Kindle Books.

What food is available with the service?

Thousands of grocery items will be available through the service.

The categories include ‘bakery’ and ‘meat and seafood’, as well as ‘fresh fruit and vegetables’ along with many more.

Amazon Fresh also has a range of special offers known as ‘Today's value picks’, which range from anything such as chocolate to beauty products.

However, as the service is in its infancy, customers are likely to find a more restricted range than those available from the main UK supermarkets.

Why is Amazon offering free delivery?

Supermarkets recently experienced a boom, as lockdown closed many businesses, and self-isolation required many to stay indoors and shop online.

Recent figures showed that for every £10 spent in the UK, online shopping now accounts for £3.

This is a sharp increase from the £2 which represented online shopping sales before the coronavirus outbreak.

Amazon now plans to cash in on this boom via online grocery orders, hoping the offer of free delivery on orders over £40 will help it compete with other retailers.

Russell Jones, country manager at Amazon Fresh UK, said sales had been "particularly strong" after lockdown, but stated that the launch of the new delivery service had been planned as an extension to Amazon's other services, ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.