Berlin’s Gorillas lays off 300 HQ Employees | Hacker News Reader

Berlin’s Gorillas lays off 300 HQ Employees

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5 pointsusername_my19 comments

While I am skeptical of the speedy grocery delivery market as a whole, I'm especially skeptical of this business in Europe. Having lived in Berlin, Tallinn, and London and spent significant amounts of time in other major EU cities, I just don't understand the value prop. I've never lived anywhere that wasn't a 5-10 min walk away from a well stocked convenience store, full grocers, or market stalls (sometimes all of them!). In Estonia I can at least understand a rationale, it gets cold and putting on a jacket and pants and such adds a little friction to a grocery run, but Berlin and the Netherlands? This seemed like one of those businesses built on cheap cash, the only question was whether it'd end up as an Uber burning investor dollars forever in the hopes of achieving some sort of monopoly but providing an at least semi-valuable service in the meantime (and at great prices when subsidized by VCs) or just eventually disappearing... my bet is on the latter now.

>I've never lived anywhere that wasn't a 5-10 min walk away from a well stocked convenience store

Maybe examine the societal issues that would make someone order groceries rather than walk for them, if physical disability is not the barrier.

Individual stores can choose to do delivery, it was common for chains like Eckerd[1] in the 90s but I didn't know many people who used them unless they were really old and wanted to get their prescriptions plus a few things delivered between visits from caregivers rather than go into a home.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckerd_Corporation

Funny to see the Eckerd name again. I was wondering why it seemed familiar and then I remembered I worked there for a month or two before it was re-branded as a CVS. I don't remember delivery being a thing, but I just wanted to stick to the photolab at the time.

It may have been just that location, it was literally across from a hospital nestled in amongst an independent coffee shop, a video rental store whose name I forget that had a pretty decent selection (first watched the catbus movie with a fever as a very young kid).

Now all that's a parking lot for the folks who moved here because it's so "welcoming".

(I grew up down the street where many folks couldn't even afford air conditioning and we didn't have a library for the township.)

Sure, of course there are reasons why some segment of the population would need or want groceries delivered, but is that market size relevant to a company raising hundreds of millions or billions of dollars?

> Maybe examine the societal issues that would make someone order groceries rather than walk for them, if physical disability is not the barrier.

My mother would be happy with such services. But I’m afraid this type of a client is too small of a niche.

Same could be said about food delivery: Why would you order food when you can easily cook healthy (for a cheaper total price) food at home? Answer: because we are lazy.

I much prefer a living breathing store, than these closed-off supermarkets that Gorillas represent.

Where I live there is one squeezed in between three normal supermarkets, each with long opening hours.

There doesn't seem to be any viable business plan for these shops, which is what the article hints at.

I have to say ... the CEO's message is quite optimistic

https://gorillas.io/en/blog/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ce...

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