Anybody remember Kosmo? There was a brief period around 2000 when you could order a candy bar to be delivered, and they'd waive the delivery charge.
(Webvan, though, was a good idea. They just botched the rollout, with 3% market share in 30 cities, instead of 30% market share in 3 cities. Their VCs pushed them into that. Webvan's former fulfillment people quietly went to work, developed Kiva distribution center robots, sold them to many online commerce companies, got bought by Amazon, and are now involved with Amazon's grocery delivery operation.)
Unfortunately I live a bit too far from the nearest major city to take advantage of a lot of this VC-subsidized gravy train. (There are a lot of deals floating around these meal kits but they're still not really a bargain.)
Another thing with Webvan--and we'll have to see how this plays out in the Food Delivery 2.0 phase we're in now--is that fresh food delivery really was a premium offering. But it wasn't clear how many people were willing to pay a premium for it. There are a lot of services people will buy if you sell them below cost.
Logistics, scale, and just learning what works and what doesn't may change all that. On the other hand, high-quality food delivered to your door is probably not going to appeal to your typical coupon-clipping Walmart shopper however efficient your operation is.
Another thing with Webvan [...] is that fresh food
delivery really was a premium offering. But it wasn't
clear how many people were willing to pay a premium
for it.
The premium doesn't have to be particularly high, in areas with a decent customer density.
In the UK, Ocado can deliver a full range of supermarket groceries without needing to mark up the goods, and with a delivery charge below ~$5 with a ~$50 minimum order. And they make a profit while doing it.
And Peapod is only about $10 (for orders over $60)--and that's with me being far enough out of a city that I can't get Instacart or most services of that type. An effective ~10% adder on prices that are probably not rock bottom is still more than a fair number of people will want to pay. But I agree it's hardly a 1%er luxury item.
I'd probably use Instacart if I could get it. I just didn't find Peapod all that compelling when I was using it because of an injury.
(Webvan, though, was a good idea. They just botched the rollout, with 3% market share in 30 cities, instead of 30% market share in 3 cities. Their VCs pushed them into that. Webvan's former fulfillment people quietly went to work, developed Kiva distribution center robots, sold them to many online commerce companies, got bought by Amazon, and are now involved with Amazon's grocery delivery operation.)