Amazon taps growing network of micro-fulfillment centers to expand 30-minute delivery

Amazon last week announced the expansion of its 30-minute delivery offering, Amazon Now, to millions of more customers across dozens more cities.

The e-commerce giant said the expansion was possible due to “a network of smaller locations designed for efficient order fulfillment, strategically placed close to where customers live and work.”

While the initial announcement didn’t offer additional details, Amazon has since clarified to Retail Brew that these facilities are called micro-fullfillment centers (MFCs), which represent a growing facet of its ulta-fast supply chain.

So, what is a micro-fullfillment center?

The term is somewhat new to Amazon. It previously used the label to describe fulfillment operations in a new Whole Foods store concept in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, that debuted in 2025. In that case, Amazon constructed a 10,000-square-foot automated micro-fullfillment center in the back of the store, storing 12,000 unique items and enabling orders to be prepared within minutes.

The company said the facility used technology from robotics firm Fulfil that uses autonomous bots to sort, retrieve and stage products.

The footprint for the MFCs built for Amazon Now are smaller and do not employ autonomous robots at the moment, according to the company, but in other ways function similarly. They provide point-to-point order fullfillment—meaning products will go directly from their source to customers without an intermediate sorting step—and use technology to assist employees in reducing picking time and improving accuracy.

As for how many of these facilities are coming to a neighborhood near you, Amazon is planning to expand the network, but it does not have a one-size-fits-all formula for the number and distribution of these sites, according to the company. 

Indeed, it could take some time before the full extent of the network becomes clear.

Benjamin Y. Fong, associate director of the Center for Work and Democracy at Arizona State University, is systematically mapping Amazon’s supply chain, and so far has not been able to include MFCs.

In his latest “primer” on the company’s distribution network, he wrote that the facilities are between 5,000 and 10,000 square feet and are still coming online. He also noted that the new network appears to recreate Amazon’s ultra-fast Prime Now network, which it folded in 2021.