31–40 of 49 posts
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that's fairly irrelevant, i think, since most of the cost comes from the per-item markups.
Oh, there's a per-item markup as well? How big is that?
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That's a good point but I personally hate spending 45 mins plus in the grocery store and would love to have someone bring it to my door. I find it to be a huge waste of time. If the ripeness of your avocado is that important to you then you'll still be one of those taking the trip to the store. One important advantage instacart has over the in-store experience is the filtering and sorting of goods. The amount of toil…
> One important advantage instacart has over the in-store experience is the filtering and sorting of goods. That's assuming you get what you ordered in the first place, and ripeness of an avocado is barely touching on these problems. My boyfriend has been experimenting with ordering cat food from various sources in SF. Necessary backstory: regular Fancy Feast comes in two categories of textures: Classic which is a pâ…
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Oh, there's a per-item markup as well? How big is that?
You can look at Safeway/Trader Joe/Whole Foods prices and compare it to Instacart's to figure that out. That being said, do you ask Safeway/Trader Joe's/Whole Foods what their markup is? The only reason you care is because it's not completely hidden from you.
“The one thing that we got extremely right about the Webvan investment was that there would be huge consumer demand for home delivery of groceries," he says. "It’s just taken time for technology to finally catch up." I don't understand this at all and would really appreciate any enlightenment. What has changed in technology in the past 12 years to enable home grocery delivery? Broadband? Cloud storage? HTML5? AJAX? F…
This is my attempt at a guess: -- For the user, it's easier than ever to place an order. Internet connection speeds are fast, smartphones have snappy native apps, 3G is everywhere -- so you can order groceries on the ride home. You can quickly download 100 images of products on the bus ride home and pick the ones you want (for example). -- For Instacart, processing those orders at scale is also easier than ever. EC2…
“The one thing that we got extremely right about the Webvan investment was that there would be huge consumer demand for home delivery of groceries," he says. "It’s just taken time for technology to finally catch up." I don't understand this at all and would really appreciate any enlightenment. What has changed in technology in the past 12 years to enable home grocery delivery? Broadband? Cloud storage? HTML5? AJAX? F…
The Webvan implosion was so big that it left a lasting stigma around that entire business model that made people assume that you'd need a Webvan-size spending budget to ever attempt it again.
Instacart has a clever twist of offloading the actual transportation and storage, the most expensive and complex aspect of grocery delivery, work onto self-appointed local providers who solve that hard part themselves independently of Instacart.
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All of these new services that enable poor or lower-income people to serve rich people (Uber, TaskRabbit, Instacart) have been enabled by two main things: an economic recession that permanently eliminated a lot of jobs and the recovery which drove economics gains to the 1%, and smartphones, which allow the customers or workers to send or receive requests at any time.
> All of these new services that enable poor or lower-income people to serve rich people (Uber, TaskRabbit, Instacart) have been enabled by two main things: an economic recession that permanently eliminated a lot of jobs and the recovery which drove economics gains to the 1% The 1% don't use Uber, TaskRabbit, or Instacart; they have actual personal drivers, servants, and chefs.
The strange thing about this is that in the UK, here every major food retailer has been doing this for years. It also has to be said, they don't break-down figures but most folks suspect it's not a profitable activity - it's a market share activity.
Mike Moritz doesn't get out of bed for less than a billion dollars - http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/28/mike-moritzs-midas-touch-gr... Looks like Instacart is on the right path to a massive IPO :) Good work guys!