21–30 of 66 posts
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.
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. I'm using Amazon Fresh and the savings from not eating out due to my laziness-based avoidance o…
I'm just curious as to why DC? They're not based there nor is DC considered to be one of the most densely populated cities.
DC is Uber's second largest market outside of San Francisco - and that includes Chicago, NYC, LA, etc. It's a test kitchen for a lot of consumer services because it's got a lot of different demographics under one roof. It's also relatively small, making it easy for Uber drivers to get around the area without incurring a bunch of extra costs for the company. Grocery delivery is also super popular in DC already. San Fr…
It's hard to compete with grocery stores: 1. They're local. Most people have a grocery store within 5 minutes of their house. 2. They're well-stocked. You have ten thousand products to choose from. Who could ask for more? 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. 4. They're accurate. You picked every ite…
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? 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.
>I'm old enough to remember Webvan, I see it as very different from something like, say, Instacart not because of the core idea of grocery delivery, but because Webvan made some mistakes that seem made-up when read today. Recall they had their IPO just 60 days after their first webstore which in turn was something like one month after their beta launch. So they went from beta with 1000 users to IPO in like 90 days. T…
AmazonFresh is doing something along the lines of what WebVan was trying, with the capitalization to make a real go of it.
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. I'm using Amazon Fresh and the savings from not eating out due to my laziness-based avoidance o…
It's hard to compete with grocery stores: 1. They're local. Most people have a grocery store within 5 minutes of their house. 2. They're well-stocked. You have ten thousand products to choose from. Who could ask for more? 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. 4. They're accurate. You picked every ite…
I just did some back-of-the-envelope math and determined that the minimum time it could take for me to go to the grocery store and come back, from door to door, is about 40 minutes, and the maximum is about 2 hours. I took into account everything from walking to my car in the parking garage and getting out of the garage to finding a parking spot, waiting in line to check out, hitting traffic lights on the way there and back, etc.
I think this is why I don't cook as much as I'd like to. I can either spend 40 minutes getting groceries and then needing to cook a meal and then eating it, or I can spend 40 minutes picking up, say, Chipotle, which includes eating the food.
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.
It's hard to compete with grocery stores: 1. They're local. Most people have a grocery store within 5 minutes of their house. 2. They're well-stocked. You have ten thousand products to choose from. Who could ask for more? 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. 4. They're accurate. You picked every ite…
Going to the grocery store is actually pretty time-consuming. That's true even though I live within a few blocks of one. I just did some back-of-the-envelope math and determined that the minimum time it could take for me to go to the grocery store and come back, from door to door, is about 40 minutes, and the maximum is about 2 hours. I took into account everything from walking to my car in the parking garage and get…
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? 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.