3 ms·

These numbers seem very high - even before Covid. Does anyone know the rough market share of that US$7.2bn in June? Is Instacart really scaling that high, with

These numbers seem very high - even before Covid. Does anyone know the rough market share of that US$7.2bn in June? Is Instacart really scaling that high, with their inefficient personal shopper approach, or is Walmart really killing it? Additionally, to compare internationally, the UK reportedly spent US$15bn in the entire of 2018 compared to the US' ~$24bn. But the UK online grocery market is much more established - every major supermarket (except Lidl/Aldi) has direct warehouse to customer deliveries by van, in addition to Prime Now, Amazon Fresh, Ocado and others. I'm struggling to reconcile the difference even accounting for the 5x population difference. Lived experience suggests that online grocery shopping throughout the UK is very prevalent but (perhaps until recently) was fairly atypical in most of the US. Possible explanations are the value of orders is greater in the US, or online grocery deliveries has a wider classification? Personally I don't use online grocery shopping in London most of the time as I live next to a supermarket. Is that perhaps more common than I realise?

rsynnott 6y ago
Before covid, about 10% of Tesco's sales were online; more like 15% now. So it's common, but not THAT common.
tialaramex 6y ago
> every major supermarket (except Lidl/Aldi) has direct warehouse to customer deliveries by van While obviously an Ocado order comes from a warehouse built for this purpose all the high street supermarkets near me are delivering from their existing stores. The Sainsbury's I use at the moment because it's right down the road and huge (so I can shop every eight days to get everything with only one exposure) has a fleet of delivery vans based there. Some also have "dark" stores that don't serve any walk-in customers but my impression is that they aren't cloning Ocado, even Waitrose (whose produce is sold by Ocado) would sell me stuff from the Waitrose near me, not a warehouse.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I think there are two things that explain the difference. 1. Tesco was a pioneer in the sector, they really did push it all forward. 2. The grocery sector is much more competitive in the UK. Although Tesco is big it is nowhere near the dominance of Walmart in the US.

rsynnott 6y ago

Before covid, about 10% of Tesco's sales were online; more like 15% now. So it's common, but not THAT common.

tialaramex 6y ago

> every major supermarket (except Lidl/Aldi) has direct warehouse to customer deliveries by van While obviously an Ocado order comes from a warehouse built for this purpose all the high street supermarkets near me are delivering from their existing stores. The Sainsbury's I use at the moment because it's right down the road and huge (so I can shop every eight days to get everything with only one exposure) has a fleet of delivery vans based there. Some also have "dark" stores that don't serve any walk-in customers but my impression is that they aren't cloning Ocado, even Waitrose (whose produce is sold by Ocado) would sell me stuff from the Waitrose near me, not a warehouse.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I think there are two things that explain the difference. 1. Tesco was a pioneer in the sector, they really did push it all forward. 2. The grocery sector is much more competitive in the UK. Although Tesco is big it is nowhere near the dominance of Walmart in the US.