5 ms·

Tired. Cold. Sick. Not yet unpacked. Apartment barren of foods. I fire up Instacart – for the first time ever – and order groceries to make a stew. An hour late

by pclark 14y ago

Tired. Cold. Sick. Not yet unpacked. Apartment barren of foods. I fire up Instacart – for the first time ever – and order groceries to make a stew. An hour later, with free delivery, the foods arrived. Living in the future.

edwardy20 14y ago
Not that impressive (to me at least). Food delivery has been around since forever- pizza gets to my house in 10 minutes. I don't see why groceries should be different.
- wlesieutre 14y ago
  Pizza places have maybe 20 ingredients in stock that all get used at a pretty predictable rate. Keeping something like a much larger selection of fruits available and fresh when you can't freeze them is a somewhat harder problem.
  - sksksk 14y ago
    Does Walmart or Target not deliver? In the UK all the large supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury's, M&S, Asda) let you order online and deliver to your house. They actually just get someone to go round a supermarket and pick the stuff off the shelves.
    - ig1 14y ago
      Online grocery shopping is more developed in the UK than any other major market. A large part of it is the London effect where you have a large number of middle-class shoppers who don't have cars in close proximity to each other, that makes the economics vastly better for the supermarkets.
      - dalke 14y ago
        Perhaps, though I know Oxford also has home delivery so it's not just London. I've not understood how Oxford could have it but San Francisco doesn't.
        arkem 14y ago
        Safeway has done home delivery since at least March, so it's not an unknown service here in the US.
      - jon-wood 14y ago
        That's true to an extent, but I've also had deliveries from supermarkets in incredibly rural areas whilst on holiday, once to a farmhouse which was so remote you couldn't see any of the neighbours.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
  - philwelch 14y ago
    A really nice pizza place will have about 50 pizza ingredients in total, plus another couple dozen things on the side when you count salads, drinks, desserts, etc.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      The definition of "really nice pizza place" is incredibly regional. To me, 50+ potential ingredients is an immediate turn-off. One of my favorite pizza places will actually yell at you if you ask for pepperoni or even shaky cheese.
      - philwelch 14y ago
        Sure, whatever. I don't really want to play pizza snob, I just wanted to point out that some places have some multiple more ingredients than 20.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        It's a good point. Even so, it's all still in about the same order of magnitude, totally different ballgame than running a grocery store.
        chris_wot 14y ago
        I can't work out why this is so difficult. They already have forecasting to work out how much fruit produce to put out for sale in the store. If you order online, then they already have the stock data so if they run out then they just say that they are sold out. I don't believe inventory management is that crude that they can't do deliveries in short time. Given that supermarkets were doing it in an albeit slightly longer timeframe (weekly), then I don't see why they can't refine the process to be same day. If anything, it gets the stock out of the store more quickly and they make a quicker sale.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        Oh, I absolutely think it is doable. I've used local grocery store delivery services several times and, when there is an issue with stock, they just call you up and ask if a reasonable substitution is okay. Those delivery services, run by the store itself, would have a 2-3 day waiting period, but that I believe was more of a picking/delivery scheduling thing than an inventory management thing.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
thirtyseven 14y ago
Really? Not so long ago, small, local grocery stores would make deliveries, some still do.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  This is certainly the case where I'm from. Neighborhood markets always deliver to the apartments in their vicinity. Most owners and delivery boys know their customers by first name. In addition, every customer usually has an "account" where they accrue bills and pay at the end of the month. It's on an honor system. If someone doesn't pay off their account at the end of the month, they stop getting deliveries. Their only option is to personally go to the store (where the store owner can confront them) or find a neighboring store, the owner of which will most likely have heard about the customer's reputation and will most likely refuse to do business with them.
michaelt 14y ago
Interesting. What's Instacart's range/pricing like? Would you say they're closer to a higher price/smaller range inner city convenience store, or do they have a lower price/larger range like an out-of-town big box retailer?
- HorizonXP 14y ago
  I'd say that they have the larger range of a big box retailer, with prices that are not as high as a convenience store, but not as low as big box retailer either.
eli 14y ago
Sure, and Peapod has been doing online grocery delivery for over a decade. Pretty sure that's not a response to Amazon.
HorizonXP 14y ago
Every time I'm in SF, I use Instacart. To be frank, if a company has pg and jl's high praise, you know they're doing something right. pg: "Incidentally, of all the startups we've funded, Instacart is one of the ones we ourselves use most. Jessica can't stop talking about how great it is. You learn how useful grocery delivery when you have small children like we do, and Instacart is by far the best option for this. Instacart is one of those rare products that's surprisingly great. I.e. you don't realize how good such a thing could be till you try it. A lot of the best startups have this quality. I wish we could figure out a way to identify them when they apply to YC, but at the moment I admit we can't." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907892 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907892 jl: "I just got a delivery 30 minutes ago, in fact. For years, I'd used Safeway.com's delivery services and now that I have used Instacart, I'll never go back. The UX is 100x better, delivery is much quicker (and cheaper), and I can order on my phone." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907948 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907948

by pclark 14y ago

edwardy20 14y ago

Not that impressive (to me at least). Food delivery has been around since forever- pizza gets to my house in 10 minutes. I don't see why groceries should be different.

wlesieutre 14y ago
Pizza places have maybe 20 ingredients in stock that all get used at a pretty predictable rate. Keeping something like a much larger selection of fruits available and fresh when you can't freeze them is a somewhat harder problem.
- sksksk 14y ago
  Does Walmart or Target not deliver? In the UK all the large supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury's, M&S, Asda) let you order online and deliver to your house. They actually just get someone to go round a supermarket and pick the stuff off the shelves.
  - ig1 14y ago
    Online grocery shopping is more developed in the UK than any other major market. A large part of it is the London effect where you have a large number of middle-class shoppers who don't have cars in close proximity to each other, that makes the economics vastly better for the supermarkets.
    - dalke 14y ago
      Perhaps, though I know Oxford also has home delivery so it's not just London. I've not understood how Oxford could have it but San Francisco doesn't.
      - arkem 14y ago
        Safeway has done home delivery since at least March, so it's not an unknown service here in the US.
    - jon-wood 14y ago
      That's true to an extent, but I've also had deliveries from supermarkets in incredibly rural areas whilst on holiday, once to a farmhouse which was so remote you couldn't see any of the neighbours.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- philwelch 14y ago
  A really nice pizza place will have about 50 pizza ingredients in total, plus another couple dozen things on the side when you count salads, drinks, desserts, etc.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    The definition of "really nice pizza place" is incredibly regional. To me, 50+ potential ingredients is an immediate turn-off. One of my favorite pizza places will actually yell at you if you ask for pepperoni or even shaky cheese.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      Sure, whatever. I don't really want to play pizza snob, I just wanted to point out that some places have some multiple more ingredients than 20.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        It's a good point. Even so, it's all still in about the same order of magnitude, totally different ballgame than running a grocery store.
        chris_wot 14y ago
        I can't work out why this is so difficult. They already have forecasting to work out how much fruit produce to put out for sale in the store. If you order online, then they already have the stock data so if they run out then they just say that they are sold out. I don't believe inventory management is that crude that they can't do deliveries in short time. Given that supermarkets were doing it in an albeit slightly longer timeframe (weekly), then I don't see why they can't refine the process to be same day. If anything, it gets the stock out of the store more quickly and they make a quicker sale.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        Oh, I absolutely think it is doable. I've used local grocery store delivery services several times and, when there is an issue with stock, they just call you up and ask if a reasonable substitution is okay. Those delivery services, run by the store itself, would have a 2-3 day waiting period, but that I believe was more of a picking/delivery scheduling thing than an inventory management thing.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

thirtyseven 14y ago

Really? Not so long ago, small, local grocery stores would make deliveries, some still do.

enraged_camel 14y ago
This is certainly the case where I'm from. Neighborhood markets always deliver to the apartments in their vicinity. Most owners and delivery boys know their customers by first name. In addition, every customer usually has an "account" where they accrue bills and pay at the end of the month. It's on an honor system. If someone doesn't pay off their account at the end of the month, they stop getting deliveries. Their only option is to personally go to the store (where the store owner can confront them) or find a neighboring store, the owner of which will most likely have heard about the customer's reputation and will most likely refuse to do business with them.

michaelt 14y ago

Interesting. What's Instacart's range/pricing like? Would you say they're closer to a higher price/smaller range inner city convenience store, or do they have a lower price/larger range like an out-of-town big box retailer?

HorizonXP 14y ago
I'd say that they have the larger range of a big box retailer, with prices that are not as high as a convenience store, but not as low as big box retailer either.

eli 14y ago

Sure, and Peapod has been doing online grocery delivery for over a decade. Pretty sure that's not a response to Amazon.

HorizonXP 14y ago

Every time I'm in SF, I use Instacart. To be frank, if a company has pg and jl's high praise, you know they're doing something right. pg: "Incidentally, of all the startups we've funded, Instacart is one of the ones we ourselves use most. Jessica can't stop talking about how great it is. You learn how useful grocery delivery when you have small children like we do, and Instacart is by far the best option for this. Instacart is one of those rare products that's surprisingly great. I.e. you don't realize how good such a thing could be till you try it. A lot of the best startups have this quality. I wish we could figure out a way to identify them when they apply to YC, but at the moment I admit we can't." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907892 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907892 jl: "I just got a delivery 30 minutes ago, in fact. For years, I'd used Safeway.com's delivery services and now that I have used Instacart, I'll never go back. The UX is 100x better, delivery is much quicker (and cheaper), and I can order on my phone." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907948 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907948