Amazon México has expanded its inventory this week to include food and beverages, including snacks, sweets, coffees and teas and wine and liquor, increasing the options for online shopping in Mexico.

Cooking ingredients, oils and dressings and gourmet products are also among the products now available on the website.

The new inventory includes a large selection of wine and liquor supplied by existing online retailers, such as La Europea, Vino el Vino and Vid Mexicana.

Some wine prices are the same on at least one of those sites as they are on Amazon, but there are no delivery charges — which at some online stores can be high — for Amazon Prime members.

However, some whisky prices were higher on Amazon.

“We’re committed to offering our clients as many products as we can,” Fernando Ramírez, Amazon México’s senior product manager, said in a statement.

Amazon sees food and drink sales as key to growth, Reuters reported today, in the belief that regular purchases to stock pantries will generate other types of sales.

The firm is challenging Walmart México with its expansion, as well as Costco.

The former said earlier this year it planned to accelerate its online grocery business in Mexico, viewing grocery delivery as “an important part of that push.”

Although it will compete for delivery services against Soriana, La Comer and Chedraui, it expects to be able to make speedy deliveries given its greater scale: it has 2,390 stores across the country.

Like Amazon, it too hopes that generating a “shopping habit” for groceries will spill over into other product types, said e-commerce head Ignacio Caride last month.

Source: Reuters (en)