What’s the Point of 15-Minute Grocery Delivery?

But isn't that part of the game?

Throw absurd amounts of money just to create unsustainable standards that end up changing consumer behavior and expectations?

It's the SME that will pay the price for their "bad service" because they can't put things at your door in 5 minutes via drones that are barely regulated.

All to thin the herd, leaving us with behemoths that can only talk to us via crappy chat-bots and auto-replies.

>I do agree it’s going to be hard to make this profitable without trampling on the workforce

is 15 minute delivery any more exploitative than 2-day or even "regular" delivery? seems like all the issues with delivery (eg. poor warehouse conditions, low pay, contractor classification, pressure to meet metrics) are there regardless of whether it's 15 minute delivery or not.

Sure. The point is catering for emergencies and cravings, and maybe laziness/convenience.

But this is exactly the sort of premium service that people should be willing to pay for. So, to me, saying that they won't charge for the service is a big mistake: they are setting themselves up for extra costs will passing on income. This will not last. Ultimately they will charge or disappear, we've seen it with other delivery services.

As you say, you're bagging a bargain thanks to VCs, so enjoy while it lasts.

I just don’t see why the demand is high enough to create a business around. While there are certainly times I wished I could get a delivery of X in under an hour, the vast majority of the time I plan ahead well enough that, when I don’t think I’ll have grocery store time/energy, ordering groceries for delivery tomorrow is sufficient. The amount of times I’d be willing to pay more for this day groceries is very small. (Edit: Obviously, you can get around this by using VC funding to keep your pricing in line with slower services. That’s not sustainable though.)

But I’m rarely a good judge of demand for a product I wouldn’t personally use, so maybe lots of people do just want the groceries immediately.

If it could be reduced to, say, 5-10%, you'd be able to cut food production by 25% to feed the same population. The strange part is that whoever is doing the throwing away is already incentivized by the potential reduction in wasted investment.

I don't know what food is included in those statistics though - I assume most of it comes from past-due-date food thrown out in stores.

I searched but couldn't find the article but remember reading about housewives (in China?) who took deliveries of groceries in bulk and then distributed them to their neighbors. It's not intended to be 15 minute delivery but you could in theory solve the last mile by having ad-hoc distribute points in neighborhoods and villages.

This is a thing in the UK - both collection and delivery. In fact I can even order in the morning and collect in the evening, if the collection point has the availability on the day. Otherwise I can order for delivery the following day, or up to 2 weeks in advance. Typically a £1 charge on top of groceries, but the actual amount can vary based on how busy the system is in the timeslot you pick - can even be free as a way for them to spread out customers across the timetable.

I didn't use it until the pandemic kicked off, and then I only started using it as a way to avoid the long queues outside supermarkets. And it was a revelation. I can now select everything I want to buy over the course of a few hours to a few days, and then go and collect at the time I picked. I rarely forget anything, as I can just add it to the order as I remember it. And from arrival to departure is normally no more than 10 minutes, can be ridiculously short if you pick the right timeslot, or can be up to 30 minutes if busy - that's still faster than parking, going into the store, wandering around, forgetting things, checking out and loading the car.

The downside to it is if an item isn't available, you may get some weird replacements or just don't get the item at all. But that's not entirely different to if you went inside anyway.

In all seriousness, if Amazon can get a delivery across the country and out for delivery within 6 hours, supermarkets should be able to select your order, pack it and make it available to collect from the store in less time.

Is that not available?

The largest British supermarket, Tesco, launched this in 1997. At the time, you could get the catalogue on CD-ROM as well as over the internet.

You book a time slot within the next few days (delivery within a 4 hour period costs less than within a 1-2 hour period; popular times cost more too). You order, they deliver it. The cost is £2-7.

https://www.tesco.com/help/groceries-faq/

Paradoxically that seems harder. If I know something is coming in the next 15 minutes then little coordination is needed. If it's coming 'tomorrow', it's much more likely the delivery driver will miss me.

This already exists.

This is available in Australia (at least in some parts).

I actually did this this afternoon - realised I was running low on groceries and needed some cleaning supplies - too heavy for me to carry all at once.

So, ordered around 5pm, and I could've had it by about 8-10pm, or in a wide range of time-slots tomorrow. I picked tomorrow afternoon.

In the US this is how it works in my experience. You order through Amazon or whoever and pick a window of time tomorrow for it to be delivered. You can get same day sometimes if it's available.

As a parent of a kid almost out of nappies, I cannot imagine ever getting to the point where we run out them. Not having the preferred brand stocked and having to make do with a supermarket brand? Sure. Running out altogether? That's like running out of toilet paper: you just don't let it happen.

You sacrifice an old t shirt as an ad hoc cloth diaper. Or call family/friends to get them for you.

But let's acknowledge there's a difference between using it sometimes, and using it always. Sometimes it makes sense. Usually, you can structure your life sensibly to not need these services. (Buy backups.) Subscription/gig services like this want people to shift all their responsibilities to an app instead of being somewhat self-reliant, and waste a ton of money in the process. Or, possibly even worse, they want to take advantage of people who don't have enough money to buy backups and get ahead of things, or tolerate knowing that this will happen with some of their customers.

You send your SO.

I doubt single parents can afford to pay for extra delivery.

There’s a fundamental issue to society where businesses can set prices at levels that could never be profitable due to VC funding. This means that any business attempting to have a sustainable business model is pushed out of the market. This results in all businesses in our markets being forced to find ways to cost compete with the businesses to whom money barely matters, which has knock on effects on employment.

This isn’t to say Venture Capital money is always bad. Its good use is allowing a business that is slowly growing to quickly scale to meet demand higher than they are currently able to supply. It also allows new businesses to get through the first few years where lack of economies of scale mean profitability is impossible. But when you look at an Uber-style company that is using prices that could never be profitable to capture market share, there’s no real difference to the issue with monopoly price fixing we have long known is bad for an economy.

If you have to tip the delivery person than it is a socially harmful business model that exploits its workers.

> ...preying on the weakest of our society with miserable wages and horrible work conditions...

Is there a long list of better jobs they could be doing that they are choosing not to because the VCs are all hypnotists? is it better for the weakest to sit around doing nothing all day?

The VCs look like losers here too, they are making lousy returns on a lot of these ventures. The problem in the story is a weak economy that means people can't get good work, and the constant infusions of cash to people who make bad long term decisions (eg, the banks after the 2008 financial crisis).

Uber felt like it was robbing VCs and exploiting the working class to give the middle class cheaper and nicer taxi rides (my crystal ball predicts someone downthread moaning about how a taxi driver scammed them...).