Dive Brief:

• Amazon’s answer to restaurant takeout and delivery services like Seamless, Grubhub, and DeliveryHero is now live.

• The service appears to be part of Amazon’s newly launched local services marketplace, rivaling the likes of Yelp and Angie’s List. The e-retail giant, which operates its “Amazon Fresh” grocery delivery in select markets, has already expanded that service through its “Spotlight” system that includes ready-to-eat meals that are sometimes from restaurants.

• “Amazon Local” went live this past weekend, though for now only in hometown Seattle, working with some 20 restaurants there.

Dive Insight:

Amazon is clearly aiming to work its economies-of-scale magic on local services. The somewhat-uncharacteristically quiet launches of these initiatives indicate that they remain experiments for the e-retailer. That's because services are tougher terrain than the e-retailer's massive e-commerce hub, or even its fulfillment network and cloud business.

But Amazon is nothing if not ambitious; TechCrunch notes that travel might be next. In fact, CEO/founder Jeff Bezos Tuesday defended not just Amazon's ambitions, but also its failures.

"We’re a large company, but in many ways because of all our emerging businesses, we’re still a startup," said Bezos, "and there’s a lot of volatility with startups.”