5 ms·

Well I could see Instacart helping (and potentially being acquired by) certain chains who simply don't want to be involved with online ordering and fulfillment.

by colmvp 10y ago

Well I could see Instacart helping (and potentially being acquired by) certain chains who simply don't want to be involved with online ordering and fulfillment. I suppose there's also the added benefit that they can choose from multiple retailers in case certain retailers carry products you can't find at others. But on the topic of delivery/fulfilment, look at some of our grocers in Canada (Metro, Loblaws, Walmart) who are worth billions of dollars, yet whose only foray into online ordering is for pickup. Wow! Innovation! A Loblaws near me was applauding itself for setting up the ability for buyers to order products online and pick it up in store, while people in the UK and parts of the US have been able to order groceries online and get it delivered for years. In 2013, Amazon Fresh expanded to SF. Full ordering and fulfilment. While in 2014, Loblaws launched the concept of click and collect, but has not expanded their offering to include delivery. It's baffling to me that neither Loblaws nor Metro have at least tested online ordering and shipping in downtown Toronto like the way Amazon Fresh expanded into major American cities.

paulbennett 10y ago
Not only is it baffling to me also, its annoying as well. I came from the UK where I would order a week's shopping and get it delivered Saturday morning. I never had to visit the store and placing an order took maybe 20 minutes. Now I live in downtown Toronto and I have to walk to the store (no car here) a carry groceries home, which means at best I can purchase a few day's worth of food at a time. I would so gladly pay a reasonable amount for delivery, and I don't mean these bespoke pick-everything-and-deliver-within-an-hour services - I just want to be able to choose a time, pay maybe $5-$10 and have a week's worth of food delivered. Is that so hard Loblaws?
- idiot_stick 10y ago
  >$5-$10 and have a week's worth of food delivered. Is that so hard Loblaws? Yes. $5-$10 isn't a lot to get time critical cargo (spoilable food) that last mile.
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    But let's look at the relative difficulty... Apparently it's at a level of difficulty such that Australia and the UK stores have already been doing this for the past 5-10 years...
    - peterarmstrong 10y ago
      In Victoria, Canada, Thrifty Foods does this really well, and we don't exactly have high density. The only constraint is a $50 minimum order.
- randycupertino 10y ago
  > I would so gladly pay a reasonable amount for delivery, and I don't mean these bespoke pick-everything-and-deliver-within-an-hour services - I just want to be able to choose a time, pay maybe $5-$10 and have a week's worth of food delivered. Is that so hard Loblaws? It takes time for the labor- maybe 2 hours of time for someone to get your food, bring it to your house, and go back. So that's probably at least $30 worth of their time. So yeah, $5-$10 is not reasonable. If you're paying that little the labor is being subsidized by something else, or you're exploiting a desperate underpaid worker.
  - hocuspocus 10y ago
    Yet most European supermarket chains manage to offer this, despite our labor laws, minimum wage, and no tipping. The marginal cost of one delivery is obviously not 2 man-hours, that'd be ridiculous.
    - randycupertino 10y ago
      > The marginal cost of one delivery is obviously not 2 man-hours, that'd be ridiculous. Why not? 1 hour to walk around the store and collect everything, 20 minutes to check it out, load the car, drive the the person's house, 10 minutes to walk the groceries to their apartment, wait for them to sign and open the door, 20 minutes to drive back. At least 2 hours of work.
      - hocuspocus 10y ago
        Of course if you run a delivery service in the most idiotic way, it'll cost you a few man-hours per delivery. But we're talking about supermarket chains, i.e. people who know a thing or two about preparing orders and dispatching them efficiently.
avn2109 10y ago
The killer feature for Instacart in NYC is that they will deliver Costco to you. Typically at Costco you're buying more stuff than you can carry, so you'd take a car home, and this would cost $20-$30ish [0] plus you'd have to carry your heavy groceries from the car to your apartment. So a lot of times Instacart is actually the cheaper option. [0] This assumes you're in Instacart's target market, aka rich yuppies who don't live in East Harlem
- sushid 10y ago
  To me, the dealbreaker is the fact that it's a percentage-rate fee as opposed to a flat-rate fee. I was able to justify spending extra for Google Express as long as I made a large order. With Instacart, the pricing is extremely blurry with an added-on fee of ~20% or so. I can't justify spending $20 + 20% on groceries. I might as well as just order out every day.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Especially considering that with their competitor Peapod, the fee actually gets lower the more you buy.
  - Splines 10y ago
    Agree. Maybe I'm not the target market, but it seems like it's charging a lot of money for not a lot of value. https://np.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/5xj47l/ever_what_instacart_is_really_charging_you_in/ https://np.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/5xj47l/ever_what_ins... Maybe I'm lucky that I live within walking distance of a grocery store, but I'd be hard pressed to pay anything more than $5 for someone to drive my groceries to me. I could afford to pay for it, but if I kept that mentality my finances would die the death of a thousand papercuts.
- oculusthrift 10y ago
  this can be dangerous because it means they rely on a single other company for their killer app. if instacart gets too big, costco might feel they're losing out on a lot of membership fees or that they could make more money delivering themselves or partnering with Amazon. this could totally freeze out instacart

by colmvp 10y ago

paulbennett 10y ago

Not only is it baffling to me also, its annoying as well. I came from the UK where I would order a week's shopping and get it delivered Saturday morning. I never had to visit the store and placing an order took maybe 20 minutes. Now I live in downtown Toronto and I have to walk to the store (no car here) a carry groceries home, which means at best I can purchase a few day's worth of food at a time. I would so gladly pay a reasonable amount for delivery, and I don't mean these bespoke pick-everything-and-deliver-within-an-hour services - I just want to be able to choose a time, pay maybe $5-$10 and have a week's worth of food delivered. Is that so hard Loblaws?

idiot_stick 10y ago
>$5-$10 and have a week's worth of food delivered. Is that so hard Loblaws? Yes. $5-$10 isn't a lot to get time critical cargo (spoilable food) that last mile.
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  But let's look at the relative difficulty... Apparently it's at a level of difficulty such that Australia and the UK stores have already been doing this for the past 5-10 years...
  - peterarmstrong 10y ago
    In Victoria, Canada, Thrifty Foods does this really well, and we don't exactly have high density. The only constraint is a $50 minimum order.
randycupertino 10y ago
> I would so gladly pay a reasonable amount for delivery, and I don't mean these bespoke pick-everything-and-deliver-within-an-hour services - I just want to be able to choose a time, pay maybe $5-$10 and have a week's worth of food delivered. Is that so hard Loblaws? It takes time for the labor- maybe 2 hours of time for someone to get your food, bring it to your house, and go back. So that's probably at least $30 worth of their time. So yeah, $5-$10 is not reasonable. If you're paying that little the labor is being subsidized by something else, or you're exploiting a desperate underpaid worker.
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  Yet most European supermarket chains manage to offer this, despite our labor laws, minimum wage, and no tipping. The marginal cost of one delivery is obviously not 2 man-hours, that'd be ridiculous.
  - randycupertino 10y ago
    > The marginal cost of one delivery is obviously not 2 man-hours, that'd be ridiculous. Why not? 1 hour to walk around the store and collect everything, 20 minutes to check it out, load the car, drive the the person's house, 10 minutes to walk the groceries to their apartment, wait for them to sign and open the door, 20 minutes to drive back. At least 2 hours of work.
    - hocuspocus 10y ago
      Of course if you run a delivery service in the most idiotic way, it'll cost you a few man-hours per delivery. But we're talking about supermarket chains, i.e. people who know a thing or two about preparing orders and dispatching them efficiently.

avn2109 10y ago

The killer feature for Instacart in NYC is that they will deliver Costco to you. Typically at Costco you're buying more stuff than you can carry, so you'd take a car home, and this would cost $20-$30ish [0] plus you'd have to carry your heavy groceries from the car to your apartment. So a lot of times Instacart is actually the cheaper option. [0] This assumes you're in Instacart's target market, aka rich yuppies who don't live in East Harlem

sushid 10y ago
To me, the dealbreaker is the fact that it's a percentage-rate fee as opposed to a flat-rate fee. I was able to justify spending extra for Google Express as long as I made a large order. With Instacart, the pricing is extremely blurry with an added-on fee of ~20% or so. I can't justify spending $20 + 20% on groceries. I might as well as just order out every day.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Especially considering that with their competitor Peapod, the fee actually gets lower the more you buy.
- Splines 10y ago
  Agree. Maybe I'm not the target market, but it seems like it's charging a lot of money for not a lot of value. https://np.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/5xj47l/ever_what_instacart_is_really_charging_you_in/ https://np.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/5xj47l/ever_what_ins... Maybe I'm lucky that I live within walking distance of a grocery store, but I'd be hard pressed to pay anything more than $5 for someone to drive my groceries to me. I could afford to pay for it, but if I kept that mentality my finances would die the death of a thousand papercuts.
oculusthrift 10y ago
this can be dangerous because it means they rely on a single other company for their killer app. if instacart gets too big, costco might feel they're losing out on a lot of membership fees or that they could make more money delivering themselves or partnering with Amazon. this could totally freeze out instacart