Amazon expands same-day delivery in Twin Cities as holiday retail battles heat up

Amazon has opened a new same-day delivery facility in Golden Valley, expanding its ability to get orders to Twin Cities customers in as little as two hours.

The 185,000-square-foot site began operating in early September and employs about 250 people. The company plans to double that number as the holidays approach, even in a facility teeming with robots.

Speed of delivery has become a clear battleground among the nation’s largest retailers this year, with Target and Walmart also putting resources toward filling gaps in same-day and next-day delivery.

The new Golden Valley facility is Amazon’s second same-day operation in the metro, joining an existing site in Brooklyn Park.

The new warehouse stocks high-demand items such as diapers, dog food and personal care products. Unlike the Brooklyn Park location, it also fulfills grocery orders — from shelf-stable snacks like Little Debbie’s Star Crunch cookies to Red Baron pepperoni pizza and other frozen goods.

Amazon Prime orders can be pulled from the reams of inventory to the loading area in less than 15 minutes and reach a shopper’s doorstep in two to five hours.

Minneapolis-based Target has built its same-day muscle around store fulfillment and its Shipt delivery service. The retailer said it now offers same-day delivery to 80% of the U.S. population and two-day shipping to 99%. This holiday season, Target is expanding next-day delivery in 35 metro areas by the end of October.

Amazon has same-day delivery capabilities in more than 140 metro areas.

At full capacity, the Golden Valley facility will deliver roughly 23,000 items per day across 800 square miles stretching from Hudson, Wis., to Watertown, Minn., to the west and Northfield to the south. Operations are expected to ramp up to more than 50,000 deliveries per day during the holiday rush, said Mike Andrea, site leader at the Golden Valley location.

Amazon plans to hire 1,500 seasonal employees across its 20 operational Minnesota locations and 250,000 nationwide — a bold proclamation as other retail giants hold back on hiring announcements. It’s the third consecutive year the e-commerce company has hired at least a quarter-million seasonal workers for the busy holiday shopping period.

Nationwide, the overall number of seasonal jobs is expected to fall to its lowest level since 2009, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The outplacement firm attributes the expected decline to higher business costs from tariffs, ongoing inflation and retailers’ growing reliance on automation.

Target hasn’t announced a specific hiring goal this year, a change from last year when it sought 100,000 seasonal workers. Instead, the company said existing employees can take on extra shifts and its 43,000 on-demand workers can fill gaps as needed.

Amazon’s announcement follows a Wall Street Journal report earlier this year that the e-commerce giant has deployed nearly as many robots as it has human workers. The company said robotics now assist in roughly 75% of its global deliveries. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Amazon expects the company can avoid hiring more people in coming years through its use of robots.

At the Golden Valley site, the Amazon robotics floor holds more than 1 million items. Yellow, nine-level pods packed with merchandise are lifted by blue, disc-shaped robots that resemble oversized Roombas and glide across the warehouse floor from one QR code to the next.

The placement of items is random — a system that helps prevent traffic jams by avoiding clustering similar products together, said Amazon spokesman Scott Seroka.

Amazon’s growth in Minnesota has alternated between rapid expansion and post-pandemic slowdowns. The company’s footprint took off with the opening of its Shakopee fulfillment center in 2016, followed by a nearby sorting center, a delivery station in Eagan and a Prime Now hub in Minneapolis.

Amazon’s sales growth slowed coming out of the pandemic, prompting the Seattle-based tech giant to close or scale back smaller warehouses after years of breakneck expansion. The smaller Shakopee sortation center closed in 2023, citing an expired lease.

The Shakopee fulfillment center has faced scrutiny over worker safety, which helped spur new statewide warehouse regulations in late 2023. Federal data showed serious injuries declined, but overall injuries at the site rose last year.

Injuries that require more than basic first aid are down more than 34% in the last five years, according to a statement from Amazon.

The Awood Center, which advocates for immigrant workers, said employees at Amazon’s Brooklyn Park site have reported similar concerns about pace and safety, though it has not received complaints about the new Golden Valley facility.

“Like any business, we have performance expectations for all of our teams, but these expectations are based on multiple factors including the performance of the entire team, site-wide. We use performance compared to peers to ensure we’re not considering any factors out of employees’ control,” an Amazon spokesman said.

The Golden Valley location has several safety features to reduce on-site injuries, including a vest worn by employees working among the yellow pods on the robotics floor.