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> Everyone knows the party can’t last forever, at some point the music will stop and not everyone will get a chair, but nobody knows how it will end – Anand San

> Everyone knows the party can’t last forever, at some point the music will stop and not everyone will get a chair, but nobody knows how it will end – Anand Sanwal, CB Insights I think we know in many cases. Business fundamentals haven't changed. In the case of food delivery, what's better about the year 2000 versus now? An app? Does the app make these companies more money? It doesn't look like it.

sophacles 11y ago
I have no opinion on the overall assessment, but about: In the case of food delivery, what's better about the year 2000 versus now? For several types of business, the biggest difference between 2000 and now isn't the App itself, but what that represents: * Almost everyone is connected to the internet (in the US anyway) * in 2000 ordering something on over the internet was considered by most people to be a risky task. Now it's such a common task that people are confused when someone doesn't do it. * infrastructure on the business side is better, well understood and more reliable. This means costs of running an online company are way, way cheaper, so profit becomes easier. Basically it means it's not necessarily bad to revisit ideas that failed in 2000 - because perhaps the cause of failure was "too soon for this idea".
- striking 11y ago
  Food delivery is nearly impossible to pull off, because you need to own the entire delivery chain in order to make money off of it. Instacart attempts to leverage existing chains around it, but then the prices are doubly marked up so no one wants to buy things, and replacing entire delivery-chain competitors in these highly ingrained markets is next to impossible. The only kind of direct-to-home food delivery that will exist for the time being is the kind offered by the stores (because they make plenty of money on the goods they sell already, so they can offer delivery as a sort of perk), or a kind of luxury food delivery (in the vein of Blue Apron or, to a lesser degree, Instacart). tl;dr: Blue Apron/Instacart, the "luxury" food delivery services, are the only non-chain delivery services that will survive. Stop&Shop Peapod et al. are subsidized and thus don't even need to worry about it. Source: tried to start a food delivery startup, stopped when the math didn't add up edit: I guess I should provide a more direct rebuttal. What I'm saying is, you've talked about the tech/PR side of this theoretical food delivery startup, but you've forgotten the food supply chain. That is actually a lot harder than the tech/PR side. It would require a highly substantial investment and fully custom logistics.

sophacles 11y ago

I have no opinion on the overall assessment, but about: In the case of food delivery, what's better about the year 2000 versus now? For several types of business, the biggest difference between 2000 and now isn't the App itself, but what that represents: * Almost everyone is connected to the internet (in the US anyway) * in 2000 ordering something on over the internet was considered by most people to be a risky task. Now it's such a common task that people are confused when someone doesn't do it. * infrastructure on the business side is better, well understood and more reliable. This means costs of running an online company are way, way cheaper, so profit becomes easier. Basically it means it's not necessarily bad to revisit ideas that failed in 2000 - because perhaps the cause of failure was "too soon for this idea".

striking 11y ago
Food delivery is nearly impossible to pull off, because you need to own the entire delivery chain in order to make money off of it. Instacart attempts to leverage existing chains around it, but then the prices are doubly marked up so no one wants to buy things, and replacing entire delivery-chain competitors in these highly ingrained markets is next to impossible. The only kind of direct-to-home food delivery that will exist for the time being is the kind offered by the stores (because they make plenty of money on the goods they sell already, so they can offer delivery as a sort of perk), or a kind of luxury food delivery (in the vein of Blue Apron or, to a lesser degree, Instacart). tl;dr: Blue Apron/Instacart, the "luxury" food delivery services, are the only non-chain delivery services that will survive. Stop&Shop Peapod et al. are subsidized and thus don't even need to worry about it. Source: tried to start a food delivery startup, stopped when the math didn't add up edit: I guess I should provide a more direct rebuttal. What I'm saying is, you've talked about the tech/PR side of this theoretical food delivery startup, but you've forgotten the food supply chain. That is actually a lot harder than the tech/PR side. It would require a highly substantial investment and fully custom logistics.