Amazon.com today announced that Prime Now customers in Seattle can now enjoy delivery from local restaurants including Cactus, Wild Ginger, Skillet, Marination Station, Re:public, Café Yumm!, Ten Mercer, Mamnoon and many more. Using the Prime Now mobile app, Seattle customers can view participating restaurants, browse menus, place orders and track the status of their delivery in real time. Once an order is placed, Amazon delivery drivers pick up and deliver the food within an hour or less.

Starting today, restaurant delivery on Prime Now is available in select Seattle zip codes and will expand in the coming days. Prime members can download the Prime Now app and enter their zip code to see if Prime Now is available in their area. In zip codes where restaurant delivery is available, customers will see Restaurants on the home page.

Prime Now, launched last December in New York, promises one and two-hour delivery of tens of thousands of products and the new meal service is another way to add value to Amazon's $99-a year Prime membership program, a core growth area for the company.

Amazon's decision to use its own fleet of drivers to carry out meal deliveries pits it against established players like GrubHub as well as newer rivals like Uber, which has expanded its own meal delivery service in cities like San Francisco and Austin.

Prime Now is currently available in 11 markets including Chicago, Atlanta and London.