It's hard to compete with grocery stores:<p>1. They're local. Most people have a grocery store within 5 minutes of their house.<p>2. They're well-stocked. You have ten thousand products to choose from. Who could ask for more?<p>3. They're timely. If you go to a grocery store, it will take you a certain maximum amount of time - the amount of time it takes to go down each aisle once.<p>4. They're accurate. You picked every item. Your fruit fits your exact criteria.<p>With grocery delivery, you can be perfectly local, but your stock is identical and your accuracy is almost always worse. And your time window + the time it takes to pick the two dozen items you need will almost always be worse than going to the grocery store.<p>That said, there is a niche for this - the elderly and the very, very busy. To capture the second niche, you'll need to up your timeliness though and improve your branding on speed. It should take no longer to deliver groceries than it does to deliver a pizza.<p>I want my DiGiorno delivered.
Why are Silicon Valley startups continually trying to get into the food and grocery delivery business? Is there research somewhere that shows that this is a lucrative market?<p>I'm old enough to remember Webvan, I'm seeing COSTCO cede their delivery service to Google, and I realize that most food delivery business is minimum wage work. I don't see the money in it.
"But long-term this is most likely not going to be economically feasible unless Uber starts to figure out other ways to monetise this, through adding delivery fees or charging advertising fees to brands that take part in the programme."<p>Really sums up the article.
Pretty sure it's moves like these that will render most Uber valuation apologists' defenses of the valuation based on cab usage growth moot. If they could satisfy the valuation on cab fare middle-person, this would not be the experiment.<p>Also, something close to most peoples' logic spot would be that they are not delivering fresh produce. So, only a subset of the stuff that you find in the "middle aisles."<p>I'll paint in a really broad stroke, but the people willing to pay premiums for the luxury of grocery delivery buy more stuff around the outer edge of the store vs the aisles of processed carbs and food science.
I was just telling my wife that getting somebody to go to Costco for me would be a game changer. Somebody else takes my list and deals with all the people blocking the aisle to get their 5 cents of sample cheese or just because they rudely leave their cart in the middle? The stress reduction alone would be worth the money.<p>I'm using Amazon Fresh and the savings from not eating out due to my laziness-based avoidance of the grocery store is going to pay for it easily.
Oh my God wow. This is highly convenient. I'm in DC, and I saw the puzzling "corner store" option when ordering a car this afternoon. I'll relate how the delivery experience goes once I try it today or tomorrow.<p>I already get my groceries delivered, usually for free from Safeway or Harris Teeter. One of them will run a free delivery special once every two weeks, so I mostly restock on non-perishables, and grab fresh food from the Whole Foods myself.<p>But the on-demand aspect brings a whole new level of convenience. I'm right in their target demo, so if it works smoothly I'll be thrilled.
Reminds me of a startup in Toronto: Usehurrier.com<p>This is really Uber's "On Demand ____" promotions (read: experiments) coming to life and I imagine partnerships with retailers (similar to their local partnerships for events and more recently restaurants) will be an easy next step for this service.
looks like new generation tries their teeth at the same delivery problem that the previous generation tried 15 years ago :)<p>Considering that delivery by a full-bodied adult in a car is a pretty expensive thing, it can be solved either by hyper-optimization (incl. prediction), or by utilizing
new or untapped delivery resources like school children/dogs/pigeons/drones/automated cars/electronically collared and constantly video recorded low-offense prisoners/etc...
Hmm.. no thanks. Given the state of the driver in the last Uber cab I took, I wouldn't want him touching my food, especially as his fingers spent most of the time either mining his nose, ears and backside. Yuck!