People have been trying to do this since 1999 with kozmo.com and it's just not worthwhile to pay a human being to hand deliver low value items.
I’ve been in a grocery store a handful of times in the last two years and it’s beyond aggravating how long it takes to find things, to roam around the store, and to deal with checkout.
It’s also interesting to see how often my parents “pop over” to the store for a single item. Not having that option (its a 2-hr trip now) has made me plan much better than I used to.
This is also my experience for folks that live in NY.
That said, I also have no use for 15 minute grocery delivery because of this. And it seems like it would only work in urban/inner suburban areas; it's not going to be practical to provide this sort of service in outer suburbs/exurbs, and they're the only ones who'd have a use for it.
I ended up paying a premium anyway — for taxi rides to the supermarket and back anyway. Not to mention how exhausted it had made me.
People were accustomed to just having a dumb phone and using a desktop computer for things before - no one needs a smartphone! Of course that totally changed.
I order all my groceries online and have them delivered on a regular basis and yes I build up a list but there are always (always! every-week always) things that are needed ad hoc, and other things that wont last between weekly shops (e.g. fresh fruit often wont last a week so you have strawberries for a couple of days then none the rest of the week)
So classic example of where this on-demand delivery is useful could be you've planned a big meal and forgot one key ingredient, or that key ingredient has gone off, or (as often happens) the online grocery delivery didn't have that ingredient on the day of delivery then what do you do? Just not eat that day? Throw out the rest of the fresh ingredients you were going to use to cook that meal that you now cannot cook? Perhaps try another recipe only then to realise that you are missing other things you need for that other thing you are going to cook? Or what if you just forgot to order something you need? Or you have surprise guests and no coffee left? Or unexpectedly ran out of something - e.g. ran out of baby nappies/diapers because the poor kid got diarrhoea and is using them up at 4x the speed of usual .... these aren't the sort of things you can just wait a few days for the next big shop for!
For me right now I just drive 10 mins to the nearest supermarket and pick up any bits (and if I am going there are almost always other things I can get at the same time while there - e.g. more fresh fruit or whatever), but I would certainly use one of these services more in the future if they continue to exist. I personally can wait a few days for new avocados to arrive if mine have gone bad before I've eaten them (the Avocado Lottery is always cruel), but some stuff simple cannot wait (e.g. nappies, baby food, personal hygiene stuff etc)
I do agree though that for the frivolous/impulse use is kinda silly - e.g. you decide you just want an ice cream or a can of coke or something.
The profitability is the question here though - the market clearly wants this service, but at what price? To make it so that it is profitable for the business while also offering a fair wage to the workers will probably increase prices to the point where it is no longer desirable from users.
If a supermarket can be profitable while it employs people to stack the shelves, man the checkouts etc., why can't you just move those people out into the neighborhood as delivery people?
Hannaford's pickup service is $5--which COVID aside seems like it would be mostly useful only in specific cases.
Sounds like a good fit. People that only go to the store every 1 or 2 weeks would be my parents or grandparents.
I go to the supermarket everyday and buy what I need for this specific day, going shopping once every weekend is kind of a boomer thing here
Lots of people use grocery delivery here too (Berlin), but I find that extremely weird given the abundance of supermarkets. It rubs me the wrong way to pay modern slaves to get toilet paper and veggies delivered to my door when I can walk down the street and get it for 20% less