Tired. Cold. Sick. Not yet unpacked. Apartment barren of foods. I fire up Instacart – for the first time ever – and order groceries to make a stew. An hour later, with free delivery, the foods arrived.
Living in the future.
Living in the future.
What's Instacart's range/pricing like? Would you say they're closer to a higher price/smaller range inner city convenience store, or do they have a lower price/larger range like an out-of-town big box retailer?
I don't believe inventory management is that crude that they can't do deliveries in short time. Given that supermarkets were doing it in an albeit slightly longer timeframe (weekly), then I don't see why they can't refine the process to be same day. If anything, it gets the stock out of the store more quickly and they make a quicker sale.
To be frank, if a company has pg and jl's high praise, you know they're doing something right.
pg: "Incidentally, of all the startups we've funded, Instacart is one of the ones we ourselves use most. Jessica can't stop talking about how great it is. You learn how useful grocery delivery when you have small children like we do, and Instacart is by far the best option for this. Instacart is one of those rare products that's surprisingly great. I.e. you don't realize how good such a thing could be till you try it. A lot of the best startups have this quality. I wish we could figure out a way to identify them when they apply to YC, but at the moment I admit we can't." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907892
jl: "I just got a delivery 30 minutes ago, in fact. For years, I'd used Safeway.com's delivery services and now that I have used Instacart, I'll never go back. The UX is 100x better, delivery is much quicker (and cheaper), and I can order on my phone." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907948