
Uber starts same-day grocery delivery service in US - HarveyKandola
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28869386
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josephschmoe
It's hard to compete with grocery stores:

1\. They're local. Most people have a grocery store within 5 minutes of their
house.

2\. They're well-stocked. You have ten thousand products to choose from. Who
could ask for more?

3\. They're timely. If you go to a grocery store, it will take you a certain
maximum amount of time - the amount of time it takes to go down each aisle
once.

4\. They're accurate. You picked every item. Your fruit fits your exact
criteria.

With grocery delivery, you can be perfectly local, but your stock is identical
and your accuracy is almost always worse. And your time window + the time it
takes to pick the two dozen items you need will almost always be worse than
going to the grocery store.

That said, there is a niche for this - the elderly and the very, very busy. To
capture the second niche, you'll need to up your timeliness though and improve
your branding on speed. It should take no longer to deliver groceries than it
does to deliver a pizza.

I want my DiGiorno delivered.

~~~
nilkn
Going to the grocery store is actually pretty time-consuming. That's true even
though I live within a few blocks of one.

I just did some back-of-the-envelope math and determined that the minimum time
it could take for me to go to the grocery store and come back, from door to
door, is about 40 minutes, and the maximum is about 2 hours. I took into
account everything from walking to my car in the parking garage and getting
out of the garage to finding a parking spot, waiting in line to check out,
hitting traffic lights on the way there and back, etc.

I think this is why I don't cook as much as I'd like to. I can either spend 40
minutes getting groceries and _then_ needing to cook a meal and then eating
it, or I can spend 40 minutes picking up, say, Chipotle, which includes eating
the food.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Grocery shopping has to be the worst inefficient process there is. Count how
many times you handle a can of beans: Shelf-to-cart, cart-to-checkout,
checkout-to-bag, bag-to-car, car-to-pantry, pantry-to-shelf, then later shelf-
to-kitchen, kitchen-to-recycle.

~~~
timjahn
Yes! Couldn't agree more. Touched on this in a comment a while back:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5039418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5039418)

So much time wasted.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and I skipped bag-to-cart and cart-to-car

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ereckers
Why are Silicon Valley startups continually trying to get into the food and
grocery delivery business? Is there research somewhere that shows that this is
a lucrative market?

I'm old enough to remember Webvan, I'm seeing COSTCO cede their delivery
service to Google, and I realize that most food delivery business is minimum
wage work. I don't see the money in it.

~~~
UVB-76
I think a lot of Silicon Valley startups cannot see beyond their Bay Area
bubble where everyone earns $150k, treats their time like gold dust, and will
pay a premium for menial services.

There isn't much money in grocery delivery services at scale.

~~~
timjahn
"I think a lot of Silicon Valley startups cannot see beyond their Bay Area
bubble where everyone earns $150k, treats their time like gold dust, and will
pay a premium for menial services."

Couldn't agree more. Amazing how tunnel visioned they are.

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Noelkd
"But long-term this is most likely not going to be economically feasible
unless Uber starts to figure out other ways to monetise this, through adding
delivery fees or charging advertising fees to brands that take part in the
programme."

Really sums up the article.

~~~
imjk
They could use the same model as Instacart currently does and charge a premium
on the individual products themselves. This is also the same model that online
delivery food services (ie Foodler) have successfully employed.

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pistle
Pretty sure it's moves like these that will render most Uber valuation
apologists' defenses of the valuation based on cab usage growth moot. If they
could satisfy the valuation on cab fare middle-person, this would not be the
experiment.

Also, something close to most peoples' logic spot would be that they are not
delivering fresh produce. So, only a subset of the stuff that you find in the
"middle aisles."

I'll paint in a really broad stroke, but the people willing to pay premiums
for the luxury of grocery delivery buy more stuff around the outer edge of the
store vs the aisles of processed carbs and food science.

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MattGrommes
I was just telling my wife that getting somebody to go to Costco for me would
be a game changer. Somebody else takes my list and deals with all the people
blocking the aisle to get their 5 cents of sample cheese or just because they
rudely leave their cart in the middle? The stress reduction alone would be
worth the money.

I'm using Amazon Fresh and the savings from not eating out due to my laziness-
based avoidance of the grocery store is going to pay for it easily.

~~~
walls
Google Express has integrated Costco, although that doesn't help if you're
outside the bay area.

~~~
ceras
Or in Manhattan.

~~~
wutbrodo
Or West LA

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s_q_b
Oh my God wow. This is highly convenient. I'm in DC, and I saw the puzzling
"corner store" option when ordering a car this afternoon. I'll relate how the
delivery experience goes once I try it today or tomorrow.

I already get my groceries delivered, usually for free from Safeway or Harris
Teeter. One of them will run a free delivery special once every two weeks, so
I mostly restock on non-perishables, and grab fresh food from the Whole Foods
myself.

But the on-demand aspect brings a whole new level of convenience. I'm right in
their target demo, so if it works smoothly I'll be thrilled.

~~~
s_q_b
Sad to report that this does not fulfill the gaps in the extant on-demand
grocery delivery system. It's expensive, slow, unreliable, and doesn't provide
the items for which the application would be most useful, e.g. delivery of
fresh perishable foods in a reliable fashion.

But, that's what beta tests are for. Here's hoping the next iteration gets it
right.

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sushid
I'm just curious as to why DC? They're not based there nor is DC considered to
be one of the most densely populated cities.

~~~
josephmosby
DC is Uber's second largest market outside of San Francisco - and that
includes Chicago, NYC, LA, etc. It's a test kitchen for a lot of consumer
services because it's got a lot of different demographics under one roof. It's
also relatively small, making it easy for Uber drivers to get around the area
without incurring a bunch of extra costs for the company. Grocery delivery is
also super popular in DC already.

San Francisco, by contrast, is almost too perfect. It would no doubt be
successful there, but it doesn't give them as good of a feel for how this
service would fare outside of Silicon Valley where these types of ad-hoc
delivery services are far more common.

~~~
mikeash
Is it really relatively small? DC proper is small, but it's just one
jurisdiction out of many in the metro area, and not even the largest one. Uber
covers a big chunk of the area. Looking at Google Maps (with the scales
matched!) you could fit SF proper in about one quadrant of the the DC beltway,
and of course there's plenty of city outside the beltway too.

~~~
josephmosby
True, but DC isn't a traditional metro area. The entire regulatory structure
changes once you leave the borders of DC, because you've moved into a new
state (Virginia or Maryland). Uber's coverage area for this service takes a
hard stop at the DC borders to keep them from running into a new set of state
laws and taxes they'd have to deal with.

~~~
wallawe
Not quite. I live in Arlington, VA and they're currently facing hurtles but
they still service the area. For a while there, cops were pulling suspected
Uber drivers over and fining them between 500 and 2k (I even had drivers ask
me to sit in the front seat so it didn't look like he was chauffeuring). Uber
would pay all of the fines for the drivers. It's been an ongoing battle but
from what drivers have told me recently, they've calmed down with the arrests.

~~~
mikeash
The grocery delivery service is only available in DC, though. Actually, just a
portion of DC. Which takes us back to the question of why DC, since you could
carve out a suitable portion of just about any city.

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pimlottc
As a resident of San Francisco, I find it somewhat amusing to be informed
about local services via a British news organization.

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nchlswu
Reminds me of a startup in Toronto: Usehurrier.com

This is really Uber's "On Demand ____" promotions (read: experiments) coming
to life and I imagine partnerships with retailers (similar to their local
partnerships for events and more recently restaurants) will be an easy next
step for this service.

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27182818284
Instarcart started its delivery via Uber, right? That's a fun little circle.

~~~
orblivion
Google was once Yahoo's search engine.

~~~
27182818284
Is that correct? I was under the impression they only pitched to Yahoo and
were turned down? Huh.

~~~
orblivion
I recall seeing it myself, anyway. "Powered by Google". May not have lasted
long.

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trhway
looks like new generation tries their teeth at the same delivery problem that
the previous generation tried 15 years ago :)

Considering that delivery by a full-bodied adult in a car is a pretty
expensive thing, it can be solved either by hyper-optimization (incl.
prediction), or by utilizing new or untapped delivery resources like school
children/dogs/pigeons/drones/automated cars/electronically collared and
constantly video recorded low-offense prisoners/etc...

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davidmking
All your transportation are belong to us

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emo_tards_on_hn
Hmm.. no thanks. Given the state of the driver in the last Uber cab I took, I
wouldn't want him touching my food, especially as his fingers spent most of
the time either mining his nose, ears and backside. Yuck!

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calvinbhai
Dear BBC: Two zones in Washington DC != USA

