
Instacart adds Trader Joe's - apoorvamehta
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/01/10/grocery-delivery-startup-instacart-adds-trader-joes-to-its-service-allowing-for-on-demand-two-buck-chuck/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=Grocery%20delivery%20startup%20Instacart%20adds%20Trader%20Joes%20to%20its%20service,%20allowing%20for%20on-demand%20Two%20Buck%20Chuck&awesm=tnw.to_c0U3e&utm_medium=share%20button&utm_campaign=social%20media
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whichdan
I wonder what the ROI would be if they hired graphic designers to make some
really snazzy thumbnails for each item? By extension, I'd be really interested
in how effectively they could push extra items, similarly to how Amazon does
it.

* "Adding avocados to your cart? Add [several guacamole ingredients] at a 10% discount, and we'll email you a free recipe."

* "Want to make your own guacamole? Add these [several items] and we'll email you a free recipe."

* "Browse these popular shopping lists"

* Possibly a "buy now" button on a recipe site that automatically added all of the required ingredients to your cart.

I could see a service like this sapping more of my money than Whole Food's
prepared food section.

(I'm in Boston, so I haven't signed up for their site - do they do any of this
already?)

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aaronblohowiak
10% is huge for a grocer. Grocery margins tend to be very thin.

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sharkweek
Was a buyer at a large supermarket for a little over a year; we were normally
pushing for 30-40% margins on most food items. On the hyper-perishable stuff,
normally higher. It did really vary vendor to vendor though.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
A large enough grocer would have the markup of both the distributor and the
gracery store, which usually total 30%ish

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josh2600
I'm intrigued by Instacart. Part of me realizes that Webvan had it right all
those years ago, and another part of me thinks this model can't scale.

The best ideas are the ones that teeter on the the edge of improbability.
Watching the success (or failure) of this company is like watching NASCAR.
Keep making those left turns until something blows up or you win the Cup.

Win or Lose, I'm glad someone is trying this idea. The Instacart folks just
might have enough hustle to pull this off.

Wishing you folks lots of luck!

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ry0ohki
I've always wondered, what happened to that $1 BILLION of infrastructure that
Webvan setup?

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josh2600
It's right next to Cuil's infrastructure.

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rdl
Cuil's infrastructure was across the aisle from my cage :)

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josh2600
Lol! That's awesome.

I always wonder about that company. I saw the ex-CEO speak at Failcon and I'm
continually reminded of the idea that companies die not because of bad product
or losing one particular deal, but, rather, because the owners decided to give
up.

To my mind, Cuil could've stayed afloat, but no one wanted it to. It was
easier to sweep that giant pile of FUBAR under the rug, but, in retrospect,
they would've still likely been a large company, albeit not Google size, but
large nonetheless.

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pdog
_"To my mind, Cuil could've stayed afloat, but no one wanted it to. It was
easier to sweep that giant pile of FUBAR under the rug, but, in retrospect,
they would've still likely been a large company, albeit not Google size, but
large nonetheless."_

Care to elaborate why (you believe they'd become a large company)?

~~~
josh2600
Ask.com and the fact that their epic fail probably gave them great SEO :).

In all honesty, I think that a 100M investment would've been enough of a
runway to right the ship IF anyone could've stomached it after the horrific
launch. Cuil could've pivot'ed their algorithm or their model and been a
relatively large search engine (1% of the market is ~$1.5B).

Success, in all things, is relative. Cuil could've been the fifth biggest
search engine on Earth and STILL have made a ton of money.

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jessriedel
Does Instacart really try to force you to sign in before you even get to their
webpage? Am I doing something wrong?

<http://imgur.com/UE0RI>

I guess I'm supposed to click "learn more", but this isn't intuitively an
alternative to signing in, nor is it satisfying.

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apoorvamehta
Yes, we do. Our metrics show that this converts better.

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waterlesscloud
Does the metric account for people like me who are so turned off by the
requirement that I'll never return to sign up at a later date?

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apoorvamehta
Yes.

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timjahn
I love the idea but I'm skeptical about the ability to scale.

I do think grocery shopping is definitely in need of a large dose of increased
efficiency. It dawned on me last time I went grocery shopping with my wife and
son just how much time and effort can be wasted grocery shopping.

1\. We drove to the store. 2\. Walked around the store getting everything. 3\.
Checked out and put all our stuff in bags. 4\. Put the bags in the car, drove
home. 5\. Took the bags from the car into the house. 6\. Emptied the bags and
put everything away where it belongs.

Steps 1-5 should be eliminated by some sort of automation. Services like
Peapod are starting to do this, but they're quite a bit more expensive.

When you think about it, you have a large number of people within a certain
radius of a local grocery store all buying items from that store on a regular
basis, but usually driving there themselves over and over.

Seems like it would be more efficient (in an ideal world) to have the store
make regular rounds (like the mailman does) to the houses with their orders.

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Avenger42
Don't forget to use driverless vehicles to make deliveries (this is an ideal
world, after all).

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TillE
Hm, probably not. That might work in a suburban setting, but imagine someone
in an apartment a couple floors up who orders a significant load of groceries.

It'd be much quicker for a person to cart the whole load to their door, rather
than waiting for the customer to unload everything in a few trips. Driverless
vehicles are feasible in the next decade or so, but delivery-robots not so
much.

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gmrple
I'm not so sure. I could see delivery robots in a decade.

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Firehed
I see delivery robots being significantly easier to create than driverless
cars. All you need is a shopping cart stuck on top of a set of stair-capable
movement system, it's not like the thing needs to be dressed up as a butler.

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ConstantineXVI
Stairs are only a requirement for humans; drones can be far more flexible.
Attach hoists to the side of the building, let them in through windows (or cut
doors for them). Easier on both parties: no additional stairwell traffic, less
chance of the drone tipping over and hitting someone.

~~~
Firehed
Excellent point. Not necessarily practical everywhere, but a much better
outside-the-box solution where it works.

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scdc
So hard to "order" fruit and veggies, though. You say you want flat leaf
parsley, but you get delivered a sad bunch of limp & yellowing leaves. If I
was in the store, I'd get curly parsley if it looked better.

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apoorvamehta
Good point. You can leave notes for the shopper for each individual item on
Instacart so the shopper knows what to buy.

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irollboozers
"Note - can you only buy the flat, sad looking parsley"

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woodchuck64
I switched from monthly Costco visits to soap.com and won't go back. Now
Instacart looks like it will save me some of those Safeway and Trader Joe
trips, too. More weekend free time!

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jrkelly
Is soap better than Amazon in your experience? I'm a heavy user of amzn for a
lot of this stuff, but hadn't heard of soap.com.

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woodchuck64
Actually Amazon owns soap.com. It's a more limited inventory but quick (1-2
days typically for most items) with free shipping over $49. I supplement
soap.com with amazon.com as needed.

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rdl
Please add whole foods or berkeley bowl or some other place with decent
produce (nob hill in MV is ok) -- Safeway is great for national packaged food,
Trader Joe's for private label frozen stuff, but both are weak for produce,
meat, fish, deli, etc.

A drug store might also be good, although Safeway probably has enough of a
selection for OTC medication, cleaning/etc. supplies, etc.

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stephth
For produce, why not order it directly from farms?

We live in downtown San Francisco and get our organic produce delivered weekly
from <http://farmfreshtoyou.com>

We've been using it for more than a year and have been happy with it, that
said I'd be curious to hear other suggestions, specially services that deliver
organic produce from a group of farms instead of only one.

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rdl
Instacart is about "oh shit, I ran out of x and y for use in the next few
hours, but if I go to the store I will miss my party or not get work done or
not make e other items". If I had a week to plan, it would be different.

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frossie
Yeah - CSAs have their place, but you are constrained to local vegetables in
season, and often you don't know more than a day in advance what you are
getting. They are great for supporting localvorism, but it doesn't cover the
"hey come round to my place tomorrow, I'll cook a green curry - oh hell I need
japanese eggplants".

Frankly vegetables and bread are the main thing I would want delivered quickly
and often - pantry staples I can stock up in one big monthly trip, it's not
really a big deal to fit that in.

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rdl
Pantry staples are generally fine if you have decent inventory tracking. The
problem is when you've started something and realize "oh, shit, we're out of
salt...the big box we thought was full behind this one was empty/spoiled/etc."

Instacart also makes a lot of sense in groups, where no one individually wants
to be responsible for going for stuff. Parties, roommates, or offices.

The problem with fish/produce/etc. is there's variation on offer. If I go to
the store and want some tuna steaks, but see hamachi is on sale, I might get
that instead. It would be hard to delegate that level of decision making to
anyone who wasn't a routine agent, or having an exceptionally good CRM, or
having a realtime inventory system at the store.

What I'd _love_ if if someone could get Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley, a few
farmers markets, etc. to publish realtime inventory info, and do a buying trip
once a day. Go in in the morning, see exactly what is there and at what price,
let me know, and then I'll let you know in an hour or so what I'll buy.
Specialized restaurants do this already (e.g. sushi chef goes to the fish
market), but maybe smaller places would be more likely to do it for ancillary
items if they could use tech to do it for them, or home cooks would do it.
Most restaurants just use food service companies like SYSCO for most of their
stuff now, though.

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joejohnson
Trader Joe's already delivers; so does Safeway. However, I'm surprised that
the delivery fee is so cheap ($3.99 for sameday). Safeway currently charges
$4.95 for delivery in a 4 hour window the next day.

Does Instacart use TJ's/Safeway's prices, or do they set their own prices for
each item?

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Mithrandir
>Trader Joe's already delivers

I hadn't heard about that before, so I looked it up. I couldn't find any TJ
delivery site, except an unofficial one from 2011, but it looks like they got
sued by TJ.[1] The official TJ website says that they don't sell online.[2]

1: [http://domainnamewire.com/2011/08/14/trader-joes-sues-
grocer...](http://domainnamewire.com/2011/08/14/trader-joes-sues-grocery-
delivery-web-site/)

2: <http://www.traderjoes.com/about/general-faq.asp#Online>

~~~
joejohnson
It must be a NY only thing.

~~~
schackbrian
IIRC, Trader Joe's has delivery but not online orders. You go to the store to
shop, and then they deliver to your apartment. That way you can walk or take
the subway even if you buy a lot of groceries.

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plusbryan
As an instacart user, I can say this is a welcome addition to a much valued
service.

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georgemcbay
As a frequent Trader Joe's customer, it seems like supporting them for
something like this would be a bit of a nightmare because the items they carry
are constantly changing based on regional supply and demand.

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TillE
What's the current state of computerized inventory systems? Allowing for some
error due to theft and accidents, I would think it'd be fairly straightforward
to keep everything up to date.

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baddox
I'm sure Trader Joes can (and maybe does) do this internally, but it's
unlikely that they'll share that information with a third party delivery
service.

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yinyinwu
I love Instacart and use the product with our startup probably 2-3times a
week. Going to the grocery store takes at least an hour when you consider
driving and standing in line. Instacart is like 7-11 - you never plan to a
trip to 7-11 and always pay a premium, but it's everywhere and convenient.
It's great that if I crave Ben&Jerry's ice cream, I can buy it and have it
delivered in under 3 hours. With the added Trader Joe's delivery service, our
Instacart usage will probably bump to 4 times a week.

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OGinparadise
" _It's great that if I crave Ben &Jerry's ice cream, I can buy it and have it
delivered in under 3 hours._"

Every time I wanted ice cream, it was in my hands in a matter of minutes not
hours :). Detergents, soaps, medicines etc can be bought via Amazon,
Drugstore.com etc. Fruits and veggies...you actually want to see before buying
them.

I don't think this will scale. Prices will have to be a lot more expensive
than normal grocery shopping, so adoption will be limited. Even if it takes
just one hour, the person doing the shopping has to be paid, instacart has to
make a profit and that will jack up the price. I understand the convenience
factor, but for the vast majority of people it's not a good tradeoff. That
said, Instacart can become a niche player and still make money.

What's up with Instacart not letting you browse without logging in?

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nell
I was really interested in the service and wanted to check it out. It wont let
me in without signing up. How do I know they are not a scam site or useless
without providing my information. Bad UX. If you want to do business, keep
your front door open.

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Mystitat
Thank you so much, I needed this so badly. I've been at home with the flu all
week and haven't been able to get out to buy groceries. I just placed my
order. I can have food now!

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irollboozers
Aw yiss.

