In NYC area we have Freshdirect now, which follows that sensible model.
Every large NY grocery store consistently seems to have either poor-quality or extremely expensive produce, which was drastically exacerbated last April: if you don’t go soon after they stock, people pick over, scratch and generally take all the edible-looking choices. Whole Foods was terrible for delivery: the pickers seemed to just choose what was available, which inevitably tends to be what in store shoppers left over. I’d much rather on average get an average apple or onion, without having to spend time figuring out whether it’s “good”: average is almost always good enough.
My total time spent grocery shopping went down, while the quality of the food went up. Their website does a really good job of focusing me on what’s fresh, in season, and otherwise likely to be good this week, and it seems like there’s a lot less waste in this model. I can also order more than I can walk home myself, which is pretty valuable when you don’t own a car.
Although, I do have to say grocery stores in London and Toronto were much nicer than NYC in my experience, so it may be a cultural/customer demand thing too.
Their site and app are glacially slow, though. Not sure what's going on there. And for a while they've had some text-entry glitch that reverses text every now and then. But that's just griping.
Also, with kids it's nice having the weekly 3-4 gallons of milk just show up rather than schlepping them home from the bowels of Whole Foods.
Compare this to where I live in a London, which is a similar PT distance to central London as Greenpoint. We do all our shopping at a brilliant greengrocer just the round the corner, there's specialty delis and such in walking distance. There's also a number of Sainsbury's and Tesco locals. Then, about 25 min walk away, there's two major supermarkets (a Waitrose and a Morrisons). I guess people in NY don't cook?
So misery either way.
What you experienced are the fruits of gentrification in NYC. Greenpoint is an overpriced neighborhood which used to be a Polish enclave (still is to a degree but on life support from what I see). People down there shopped at local ethnic markets, many of which are gone due to gentrification which drove real estate prices through the roof.