Let's talk about the hard problem here. Control and Flexibility. I'm a regular Instacart user and I don't think I've ever had a perfect order. There's always so

Let's talk about the hard problem here. Control and Flexibility. I'm a regular Instacart user and I don't think I've ever had a perfect order. There's always something wrong in terms of size, quality, or availability. Most of the time it's no big deal but it begs the question, can these problems be eliminated? Take the perspective of a 3 star chef. You've got two major strategies to work with 1. Control and 2. Flexibility. The control strategy means you have deep trust in reliable suppliers. You've spent years finding the people who can get you what you need when you need it. You build your menu in consultation with your suppliers and then you check, check, and recheck every single order to make sure the standard doesn't slip. It's incredibly hard. The flexible strategy means that you adapt your menu daily or nearly daily to the supply you select yourself. Your talent is taking what is available, finding the best, and creating surprise and delight in a clientele who like that kind of thing. This is also incredibly hard. Basically nowhere in the high-quality-fresh-food world can you 100% rely on supply. And that's the challenge that Instacart faces. It doesn't have any strong relationships with suppliers (it's all third party or arms-reach) and it has almost no ability to be flexible because the orders are set by people who are hard to reach and haven't explained their needs. There's some light in this tunnel. For example plantoeat.com (recipe and meal planning service) now integrates with instacart, but it doesn't work well at all. Even when it does populate the cart shoppers don't know the recipe associated with what they are buying and aren't incentivized to care. Throwing layers of ML on top of unpredictable systems isn't a terrible idea, but it's a bandaid. The problems as I've described above are 1. Lack of control and 2. An inability to be flexible because you don't understand the needs you're fulfilling. The best answer to this is vertical integration. Goodeggs.com is one vertically integrated grocery delivery service. You could also think of it as a net-first grocery store, ghost grocer, whatever. When I buy from them I'm much more likely to get what I ask for. And in the cases where I am ordering a meal kit and they are out of some component, they know what can and cannot be substituted to fulfill the requirements of the recipe. I don't think Instacart is going anywhere, it does what it does pretty well and I think it will keep getting better. But Amazon was right to buy Whole Foods and until Instacart owns the entirety of the production and distribution chain they won't get to the kind of experience people have been used to when they plan a meal, visit a store, and select for themselves.