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Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

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Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#31

Post by feydr »

sytelus wrote: post #25

Back of the envelop calculations: A typical delivery would cost 1 hour of someone's time. At minimum wage this would cost ~$5. So $99 buys you 20 deliveries. If you batch up 3 customers every hour than $99 can pay for 60 deliveries. If your order twice a week for 50 weeks than customer gets 100 deliveries for $99. So net/net Instacart would have gap of 40 deliveries = $33. So in essence they would eat up $33 per cust…

fyi - SF min. wage is $10.24/hr - although I just got an invite to the app and if it's true to their word I'll use it all the time - I was using safeway delivery before as I don't have a car currently and it's a real pita to do groceries w/out - even zipcar will cost around that much plus your time

Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#32

Post by hkmurakami »

jmduke wrote: post #20
frossie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. For example Amazon offers quite a poor consumer experience for clothing and shoes, even if they do sell them. There are reasons why Zappos can thrive (and presumably why Amazon acquired them). [Edit in response to comment below: I do not believe it is right to try something in a store and then go buy it online. Even if you believe that is okay, it actually proves that the purely-online consumer experience is sub…

My Amazon experience for clothing and shoes is roughly the same as for all other Amazon products; I visit a physical location to actually peruse/test the product (in this case, try it on) and then order it cheaply online. Do you have specific pain points, or is it the innate difficulty in online shopping for clothes?

>My Amazon experience for clothing and shoes is roughly the same as for all other Amazon products; I visit a physical location to actually peruse/test the product (in this case, try it on) and then order it cheaply online.

Because so many of us (including myself) now behave in this manner, I'm fairly convinced that most brick and mortar stores will have to assume an "annual dues" model a la Costco to survive. (and offer some form of competitive advantage over Amazon, of course -- ex: focusing on item discovery rather than cookie cutter merchandise, etc.)

Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#33

Post by tednaleid »

In Minneapolis, we've had grocery delivery for quite a while now through Coborn's Delivers (http://www.cobornsdelivers.com/). It used to be Simon Delivers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimonDelivers), a startup that went under and then was taken over by an existing local grocery chain.

We pay $5 for next-day delivery or $10 for same-day (for orders of at least $50, otherwise add another $5 to delivery).

It's a huge time saver, we have groceries delivered every Sunday and they have good selection and produce. The prices are a little more expensive, but it's totally worth it for us.

The startup I'm working at also uses it periodically to have soda and snacks delivered. Much easier and more reliable than having to send someone out every few weeks.

Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#34

Post by AJ007 »

jmduke wrote: post #20
frossie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. For example Amazon offers quite a poor consumer experience for clothing and shoes, even if they do sell them. There are reasons why Zappos can thrive (and presumably why Amazon acquired them). [Edit in response to comment below: I do not believe it is right to try something in a store and then go buy it online. Even if you believe that is okay, it actually proves that the purely-online consumer experience is sub…

My Amazon experience for clothing and shoes is roughly the same as for all other Amazon products; I visit a physical location to actually peruse/test the product (in this case, try it on) and then order it cheaply online. Do you have specific pain points, or is it the innate difficulty in online shopping for clothes?

I can't speak for the other poster, but for me, its mostly a sorting problem.

I do think Amazon has improved on this a lot. In the past I would find multiple listings, for the same product, from different merchants, under different names.

As an example, if I am looking for a specific Diesel jean I have waist, length, wash, and cut. The wash might be either described correctly, "0073N", or incorrectly "Dark blue." Looking at it now, this is much improved over where it was just a year ago.

On the other side of things, Amazon has a problem with fake products getting in their inventory by third party sellers being labelled as genuine -- another issue that has been getting better (The iPhone Charger listed as by Apple but priced like an iPhone app, was there for years.)

Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#35

Post by AJ007 »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #19
greghinch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that Amazon not having much success in this market is not a great sign, it seems like there are probably a number of other reasons they haven't been expanding the service. Amazon is trying to be the one spot you buy all physical goods, but it's been proven time and time again that getting to generalized, or trying to be all things, means you can't do all of them (or sometimes any of them) well. I think…

Personally, I wish Amazon had stuck with books. IMO, their diversification has made their site organization suffer -- especially when they allowed 3rd-party sellers to create product listings (which led to maddening duplicates). I pray that Newegg's diversification from computer hardware won't have the same adverse effect, but it's probably a law of retail that it will.

Anecdotaly, I had two experiences where my card got flagged by NewEgg, they didn't bother telling me until the next day. I cancelled the order, over nighted it from Amazon for almost exactly the same price.

I cringe every time I have to order something outside of Amazon, dreading a MasterCard secure card, frozen order, mis-packaged products, and any number of other issues that affect my physical goods purchases outside of their system.

Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#36

Post by watchdogtimer »

We started and operated a grocery delivery service like this for some 15 years as a sideline to our normal delivery business.

It was an operational nightmare.

Picking one order for a customer at a grocery store quickly is hard enough. Two orders requires using two carts and care that you don't mix up the orders. Picking more than two orders at a time is almost impossible, which limits your productivity.

We routinely had customers who would order more than a cart worth of groceries at a time. Offices would order 20 cases of soda pop and several boxes of munchies. Picking, transporting, and delivering these orders often took well over an hours' worth of time each.

If the average customer is ordering once a week, the $2 they receive won't be enough to cover their costs, and they'll have to charge significantly more than shelf price for the groceries if they are to be profitable. But this will discourage customers who believe they are paying an annual fee in return for "free" delivery.

Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#37

Post by steve8918 »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #19
greghinch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that Amazon not having much success in this market is not a great sign, it seems like there are probably a number of other reasons they haven't been expanding the service. Amazon is trying to be the one spot you buy all physical goods, but it's been proven time and time again that getting to generalized, or trying to be all things, means you can't do all of them (or sometimes any of them) well. I think…

Personally, I wish Amazon had stuck with books. IMO, their diversification has made their site organization suffer -- especially when they allowed 3rd-party sellers to create product listings (which led to maddening duplicates). I pray that Newegg's diversification from computer hardware won't have the same adverse effect, but it's probably a law of retail that it will.

I completely disagree. I think Amazon.come is absolutely amazing, and I do the vast majority of my shopping through it. Bezos's intention was to offer everything under the sun when he started the company, hence the name Amazon, because of it's diversity in terms of number of species that exists there.

I compare my experience with Newegg, and although I've bought some stuff from Newegg, I will generally go with Amazon, even if it's a few dollars more expensive, because I trust Amazon so much more, and the entire experience is so much better. I'm basically their model customer, and they have me hook, line, and sinker, especially with Amazon Prime.

Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#38

Post by aero142 »

w1ntermute wrote: post #14
blhack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't as hard as you think. Place an optical indicator (like a QR code), on a piece of paper, and put it where you want the groceries to wind up. Drone finds your house. Finds your landing spot (which was presented to you via a nice "print this" dialog when you ordered), and sets the stuff down. Alternatively, if you're going to be doing this, you can purchase and register an IR beacon that is more permanent tha…

It's not that simple. There are a lot of people living in apartments - how's it going to work for them? And where exactly would you place the indicator? In your front yard? Normally, delivieries are made to your porch, but the drone would have difficulty finding an optical indicator on the porch from above. And what about groceries that need to be refrigerated? Those will need to be dealt with specially.

Oh noes, now I only have a business that delivers groceries to people with lawns. What a tiny niche business:) Seriously though, those are really lame problems. If I could sign up for a service that uses a geofence to find out when I get home and then f-ing airlifts milk to the dead center of my front lawn, I would buy so much milk.

Re: Instacart (YC S12) aims to be the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery

#40

Post by shasta »

w1ntermute wrote: post #14
blhack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't as hard as you think. Place an optical indicator (like a QR code), on a piece of paper, and put it where you want the groceries to wind up. Drone finds your house. Finds your landing spot (which was presented to you via a nice "print this" dialog when you ordered), and sets the stuff down. Alternatively, if you're going to be doing this, you can purchase and register an IR beacon that is more permanent tha…

It's not that simple. There are a lot of people living in apartments - how's it going to work for them? And where exactly would you place the indicator? In your front yard? Normally, delivieries are made to your porch, but the drone would have difficulty finding an optical indicator on the porch from above. And what about groceries that need to be refrigerated? Those will need to be dealt with specially.

Right, refrigeration is one of the big practical problems with UAV grocery delivery...

In the foreseeable future, I think you'd have better luck delivering groceries by catapult than by UAV.

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