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Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

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Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#61

Post by barbazoo »

stametseater wrote: post #41

You know most grocery stores offered a delivery service years before SV decided to turn it into a business model. It was a mostly unadvertised service that grocery stores ran (and likely still do run) mostly for the benefit of 'shut ins', people with disabilities or ailments that prevented them from leaving their homes. The way it worked was pretty simple; you'd call in your order, or sometimes use the store's websit…

> To reiterate, the service was intended for people who couldn't go to the store themselves, not for yuppies.

What an odd thing to say. Why should people have to drive and spend their time at the grocery store if the grocery store can do that much more efficiently? Employees pack what looks like dozens of orders at the same time and drive them to the neigborhoods. In a densely populated area I can't imagine that being less efficient than going yourself.

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#62

Post by Merad »

culturestate wrote: post #16

My biggest gripe with HelloFresh, et al is that I still need to do the prep, so they don't actually save me much time. It's nothing more than curated grocery delivery. Years ago, there was a service in Hong Kong (I wish I could remember the name) that did daily delivery of already prepped meal kits - onions pre-chopped, avocados cubed, oil portioned for each step, etc. It was basically cooking by numbers, and extraor…

> My biggest gripe with HelloFresh, et al is that I still need to do the prep, so they don't actually save me much time. It's nothing more than curated grocery delivery.

For me the biggest value add of Hello Fresh is the meal planning aspect. I don't have to spend time every week figuring out what I want to cook for 3-5 different meals, or track down the ingredients to make them, or add up calories to make sure they're health conscious.

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#63

Post by [deleted] »

striking wrote: post #44
culturestate wrote: post #16

My biggest gripe with HelloFresh, et al is that I still need to do the prep, so they don't actually save me much time. It's nothing more than curated grocery delivery. Years ago, there was a service in Hong Kong (I wish I could remember the name) that did daily delivery of already prepped meal kits - onions pre-chopped, avocados cubed, oil portioned for each step, etc. It was basically cooking by numbers, and extraor…

https://www.factor75.com/ makes meals that you basically only have to reheat. They're pretty tasty and never frozen.

[deleted]

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#64

Post by barbazoo »

prmoustache wrote: post #21

Article peing paywalled, I had to google to understand what was that meal-kit concept. It isn't hard to understand why it fail. This kind of service is only useful in a broken by design neighborhood and urbanism failures.

I would add lifestyle and education to the list of failures as well.

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#65

Post by GlacierFox »

I'm not sure if its because I grew up very poor but I always find people in my apartment block who use Hello Fresh and the like a bit 'snooty'. I can get an entire shop - breakfast, lunch and dinner *and* snacks for the entire week for the price of one of those boxes.

I barely have time to myself bit still manage to plan my meals and make my own dinner quickly.

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#66

Post by robg »

algoatecorn wrote: post #48
robg wrote: post #9

Anyone know of a pantry and fridge management system that supports recipes and new ordering? Seems complicated until it’s done.

This is something I'm interested in doing. Computer vision analysis of at-home food stock -> personalized shopping and recipes -> partner with grocery chains to reduce shopping times and optimize inventories. There are many other stakeholder alignments as well

Why not upc codes into recipes and portions into reordering? Yes, end user has to scan stuff, but if reordering handled well, the initial set up isn’t hard. And solves one of the biggest family pain points: what do we have to eat?

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#67

Post by asveikau »

barbazoo wrote: post #61
stametseater wrote: post #41

You know most grocery stores offered a delivery service years before SV decided to turn it into a business model. It was a mostly unadvertised service that grocery stores ran (and likely still do run) mostly for the benefit of 'shut ins', people with disabilities or ailments that prevented them from leaving their homes. The way it worked was pretty simple; you'd call in your order, or sometimes use the store's websit…

> To reiterate, the service was intended for people who couldn't go to the store themselves, not for yuppies. What an odd thing to say. Why should people have to drive and spend their time at the grocery store if the grocery store can do that much more efficiently? Employees pack what looks like dozens of orders at the same time and drive them to the neigborhoods. In a densely populated area I can't imagine that bein…

> Why should people have to drive

Want to add, with walkable cities and less car centricism you absolutely don't have to drive.

Not meaning to be insensitive to less healthy people who enter into that condition through no fault of their own, but also, perhaps fewer people would be in a position that they are physically unable to shop for groceries if they didn't "have to drive", and got in the exercise of a daily walk to the grocer.

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#68

Post by stametseater »

barbazoo wrote: post #61
stametseater wrote: post #41

You know most grocery stores offered a delivery service years before SV decided to turn it into a business model. It was a mostly unadvertised service that grocery stores ran (and likely still do run) mostly for the benefit of 'shut ins', people with disabilities or ailments that prevented them from leaving their homes. The way it worked was pretty simple; you'd call in your order, or sometimes use the store's websit…

> To reiterate, the service was intended for people who couldn't go to the store themselves, not for yuppies. What an odd thing to say. Why should people have to drive and spend their time at the grocery store if the grocery store can do that much more efficiently? Employees pack what looks like dozens of orders at the same time and drive them to the neigborhoods. In a densely populated area I can't imagine that bein…

If you don't want your food to be driven to you, then live in a city. This is what I do, I haven't used my car when grocery shopping for years. If you choose to live in a suburb or rural area, then a car lifestyle is something you've chosen for yourself.

> Employees pack what looks like dozens of orders at the same time and drive them to the neigborhoods.

This isn't the way it was done with the service I describe. There generally would not be enough demand so most orders would be 1-to-1, no more efficient than somebody driving to the store themself.

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#69

Post by algoatecorn »

robg wrote: post #66
algoatecorn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I'm interested in doing. Computer vision analysis of at-home food stock -> personalized shopping and recipes -> partner with grocery chains to reduce shopping times and optimize inventories. There are many other stakeholder alignments as well

Why not upc codes into recipes and portions into reordering? Yes, end user has to scan stuff, but if reordering handled well, the initial set up isn’t hard. And solves one of the biggest family pain points: what do we have to eat?

Hmm. If I'm imagining this correctly, then could the user obtain this data via checkout - through some shared database with the supermarket?

And I agree about the pain point. It is part of what got me interested in this a while back.

I also think the decision of what to eat is also an issue with many people. Present them with a few options based on budget, preferences, and nutritional goals. Base those options on inventory data and expiration dates to reduce food waste (grocery bottom line).

Perhaps target the consumer group of:

1. at-home eater

2. enjoys cooking

3. wants to simplify the process.

Then increase demand by converting other eater-types into the target market.

Ultimately, I think user-experience would be the differentiating factor.

Re: Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

#70

Post by 4b11b4 »

LazyMans wrote: post #24
culturestate wrote: post #16

My biggest gripe with HelloFresh, et al is that I still need to do the prep, so they don't actually save me much time. It's nothing more than curated grocery delivery. Years ago, there was a service in Hong Kong (I wish I could remember the name) that did daily delivery of already prepped meal kits - onions pre-chopped, avocados cubed, oil portioned for each step, etc. It was basically cooking by numbers, and extraor…

Local networks might be the only way to make this cheap enough to drive enough customers to use it. The programs are too expensive for me to justify, and a big part of that is the packaging and shipping costs. Local networks doing daily delivery don't need dry ice, can use minimal packaging, can batch orders and send out with their own delivery drivers/routes. They could even pick up the packaging for reuse upon deli…

I have been considering this idea for some time now. Local food networks which flip the paradigm from "on-demand" to strictly in advance. Right now, if I want to order food from a restaurant, I can only do this "on-demand". If you want to join this on-demand food preparation world as a chef, maybe start with a food truck. However, operating "on-demand" is difficult. Why not only in advance? (of course, on-demand food will always be here to stay...)

In advance enables batch orders, predictable quantities of ingredients & labor, no need for insane packaging and ice, etc. These "meal-kit" services do this, but as many other comments say... you still need to do your own prep and cook it.

Some people are already doing this model (i.e. there's a couple in my city offering a bulk meal paid for and prepared once a week), but they built it their self from the ground up. Can we not build a network to enable this? The door would then be opened to an individual chef to contribute to providing people with food. Existing restaurants could of course offer their best seller or most easily prepared bulk meal. Yes, as you say: nearly impossible to build. There are many obstacles. But the benefits are numerous.

Sounds like you've thought about this a bit already? Mind if I pick your brain?

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