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Comment by kevingibbon | Hacker News Reader

"While Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta would not explain exactly where these groceries come from, he guaranteed they are cheaper."

Is Instacart getting into the shoplifting business?

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It is not really difficult to imagine this. For example, Safeway near the Caltrain station in SF has exorbitantly priced groceries than Costco or Safeway in Sunnyvale. They maybe using this to their advantage. Hence, for a SF user, it might be cheaper still to use Instacart which in turn gets its groceries from other cheaper stores. And since they do this in bulk, the economies of scale sides with them.

Even in bulk, the cost of transport from Sunnyvale to SF is not trivial.

$200 - if I am getting groceries for 100 users (and making $5 per order), it should be good.

There's a pretty big profit to be made by buying wholesale/in bulk. My second job is running a restaurant and wholesale prices on items can be ridiculously cheap. Think 12 avocados for $5 right now, one case of 50+ for $10-15... and these are even better quality and fresher than the $1-3 you might pay per avocado at the local supermarket. Another example: the Oreos that I like to get on instacart that are often way cheaper than Safeway and are pretty close to the wholesale prices I pay for the restaurant.

All it takes is a sellers permit. (In some cases, like Costco Business Center, just a membership, not even the permit.)

They're not shoplifting, they're buying...used: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/14/why-would-dr...

Instacart's inventory is not shoplifted and not "...used."

I am always surprised at how willing people are to make false allegations that have no basis in fact or observation. What can be gained from such a thing?

garry - fwiw - the whole team cracked up when they saw the comment.

haha. Sorry Garry, my comment was completely fictitious. Not obvious?

I laughed. It was obvious.

It seems that I should give commenters more credit. =) It's often that I read comments (some other ones even in this story) that I literally cannot believe people are willing to post. Sorry about that.

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