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Comment by bsharitt | Hacker News Reader

Here in the US, many Kroger and Walmart location have online ordering with pickup already in place. So I'd imaging it wouldn't be a big jump for either of them to offer delivery. My other local grocery chain, Publix, has gone the instacart route for their grocery delivery for now.

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This is something that has baffled me since I moved to the US. In the UK, most of the major supermarkets have offered their own online delivery service for 10+ years:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/may/02/online-shoppin...

Why have the major retailers here been so slow off the mark?

Tom Thumb had a delivery service during the late '90s called GroceryWorks, but it died in the dot-com bust.

And then there was Webvan that IPO'ed in Nov, 1999 with a market cap north of $4.8 billion. RIP: 2001.

Kozmo.com was another amazing one back in 2000. We would order movies and food and have them delivered in < 1 hour.

One of the delivery guys even walked through our (open) door, dropped the food on the coffee table and put the VHS tape in for us.

Sadly, those economics didn't work out.

OK look at the size of the UK and the US and you'll get closer to your answer why this hasn't been a major development in the US.

Yeah, but there's no requirement for services to be national or to cover areas outside cities with insufficient density. I suspect it has more to do with large US supermarkets with large parking lots and high auto ownership.

[ADDED: For example, Peapod is only available in some areas of the Northeast and Midwest]

Well since there's no-requirement for it to be national then, I'd point out that in the D.C. area there are 2 major chains that delivery groceries, and 3 others that allow online ordering and pickup at select stores.

It's been done for at least 5 years.

Exactly until the time comes when Publix and others will see money in delivering themselves and out of their free will will ban delivery services from their stores.

This service is not so popular yet (Im having hard time counting one friend who uses delivery services) but make it popular enough and Instacart and others will be out of the door.

This will be similar to LA-Fitness and other chains of gyms like Gold's Gym forbidding outside trainers for training gym members. You can only hire a gym instructor that is employeed by gym you attending.

Of course Instacart can ignore such ban and shop "incognito" but I doubt it would be great sales pitch to shareholders/investors.

I know my local Albertson's and Tom Thumb both offer delivery. I find that to be of limited use, since I don't want to let the store employee search for my produce / bread / meat / milk. They're bound to find the stuff closest to clearance.

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