4 ms·
There's a bit of a market. I live where Grocery Gateway runs (Toronto). It went well and I even used it periodically for the first few years, but they ran into
by halostatue 15y ago
There's a bit of a market. I live where Grocery Gateway runs (Toronto). It went well and I even used it periodically for the first few years, but they ran into the problem that their costs (gas) went up dramatically and they had to make a number of changes.
Ultimately, they were bought out by one of the local chains (Longos), who reduced their inventory even further and raised the delivery fee higher, so I haven't shopped with them in years.
The biggest problem with grocery delivery in North America is going to be distance. Toronto is about 43km east-west by about 21km north-south, and the GTA is probably 100km east-west and 50km north-south. It's really hard to cover those distances in a time-effective manner, and refrigeration trucks are expensive to buy/lease and maintain; the 401 running through Toronto is one of the busiest highways in the world. You'd need to have the ability for a truck to be able to pull into any of your chain's stores and restock, and there you might run into problems because (a) not all stores are company stores (they may be franchisees; I'm not sure how common this is with grocery stores) and (b) the stores, even if not franchises, tend to do a lot of market segmentation meaning that you may not have all the same products because the neighbourhood has different needs.