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Its interesting that in the UK, its more environmentally friendly to have your groceries delivered than to drive out and get them yourself because of the effici

Its interesting that in the UK, its more environmentally friendly to have your groceries delivered than to drive out and get them yourself because of the efficiency of the specialised delivery vans that have refrigerated racks for 100s of pallet\trays and then do a route in cities\suburbs serving dozens of orders in close proximity. Some random taxi driver sticking a pallet in their boot (sorry, trunk) seems like a pretty crap and expensive alternative.

Retric 10y ago
Unless they just want back-fill for volume. They can back fill using random Taxi for less than the cost of building / buying a truck that rarely gets used. Sort of like peaking power plants, their fuel costs are extreme. But if you only need them for ~5% of your power ~5% of the time that's 0.25% which is negligible. Similarly, if you don't know expected volumes a test run without large capital / personnel costs is very reasonable.
ghaff 10y ago
It seems like a reasonable way to experiment. The history of online grocery delivery in the US is littered with companies like Webvan that made huge infrastructure investments up-front on the "if you build it they will come" model. This seems like a really sensible way to find out if there is a market for almost zero investment.
- Animats 10y ago
  Webvan failed because their VCs wanted them to expand to many cities rapidly, and they ended up with 3% market share in 30 cities, instead of a profitable 30% market share in 3 cities. Webvan is back. Try "http://www.webvan.com/" http://www.webvan.com/". It's part of Amazon now. Webvan's operations head and some of his team went to Amazon. Amazon management observed that customers liked Webvan, and it would be a viable business if they could get the operating cost down. So the Webvan group was part of the effort to robotize Amazon's operations and build more local warehouses. Expansion is more cautious this time, but profitable.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  Part of the issue is that companies like Webvan and Instacart exist. There's not really a whole lot of money in it - supermarkets in the UK manage to charge anywhere between £0 and a whopping £7. The thing is, if you don't provide online shopping as a supermarket, your customers will just use another supermarket's online shop.

Retric 10y ago

Unless they just want back-fill for volume. They can back fill using random Taxi for less than the cost of building / buying a truck that rarely gets used. Sort of like peaking power plants, their fuel costs are extreme. But if you only need them for ~5% of your power ~5% of the time that's 0.25% which is negligible. Similarly, if you don't know expected volumes a test run without large capital / personnel costs is very reasonable.

ghaff 10y ago

It seems like a reasonable way to experiment. The history of online grocery delivery in the US is littered with companies like Webvan that made huge infrastructure investments up-front on the "if you build it they will come" model. This seems like a really sensible way to find out if there is a market for almost zero investment.

Animats 10y ago
Webvan failed because their VCs wanted them to expand to many cities rapidly, and they ended up with 3% market share in 30 cities, instead of a profitable 30% market share in 3 cities. Webvan is back. Try "http://www.webvan.com/" http://www.webvan.com/". It's part of Amazon now. Webvan's operations head and some of his team went to Amazon. Amazon management observed that customers liked Webvan, and it would be a viable business if they could get the operating cost down. So the Webvan group was part of the effort to robotize Amazon's operations and build more local warehouses. Expansion is more cautious this time, but profitable.
vertex-four 10y ago
Part of the issue is that companies like Webvan and Instacart exist. There's not really a whole lot of money in it - supermarkets in the UK manage to charge anywhere between £0 and a whopping £7. The thing is, if you don't provide online shopping as a supermarket, your customers will just use another supermarket's online shop.