Click This Way, Please

So you’re ordering a cake cookbook on Amazon.com, and you realize your mixer is kaput. Well, just click over to Amazon’s new kitchen store and you can add a mixer to your cart without leaving the site. In recent months, Amazon also has begun selling tools, garden supplies, toys and furniture. And, oh yeah, it sells books and music. The appeal of the kitchen store, which sells everything from pots and pans to napkin rings, is like that of a department store: Why hopscotch across cyberspace when you can find it all here, particularly if you’re an Amazon devotee?

But why not? The Internet is made for comparison shopping; you can click from site to site to check prices without the hassle of driving there. And it’s not as if Amazon’s kitchen store is some Amazon.com-like money saver. (Books often are 30% to 40% off list.) One of the site’s best sellers, an automatic grind Cuisinart coffee maker for $100, is about the same price on half a dozen other Web sites, and one, ComfortHouse.Com, offers it for $10 less with another purchase. An OXO salad spinner for $25 on Amazon ranges from $21.99 to $27, depending on the site you shop. A Cuisinart ice cream maker at $60 is the same price on other sites I checked, though yet again, one site--chefscatalog.com--throws in a free replacement bowl.

Although some of Amazon’s kitchen offerings are good, including a “special value” category that features some nice savings on pots and pans, some are just plain weird. Why offer dish towels at all if you’re going to give just two choices? My grocery store has more than that.

What the Amazon site does offer is a nice place to browse. There are cooking tips and articles from cookbook authors and chefs, recipes and more of what Amazon does so well on its book site: product reviews from readers. And if nothing else, Amazon.com Kitchen is well organized and easy to use, making clicking, ordering and searching as good as it should be.

It is fun to slip over to Amazon’s other departments after you’ve started somewhere else; just add shoes, and maybe I’ll stick around.

https://www.amazon.com/kitchen