Instacart Expands To Chicago | Hacker News Reader

Instacart Expands To Chicago

techcrunch.com

64 pointsapoorvamehta32 comments

Mehta tells TechCrunch that “33 percent of the year, Chicago has some form of precipitation” and that his company has learned in the San Francisco area that “people just do not like grocery shopping when it’s raining.”

I think in Chicago he's going to learn something about how much people like grocery shopping when it's 15°F outside too...

I can't tell if this writer actually lived in Chicago, or just can't handle weather that isn't 72F and sunny.

"It’s as cold as the last circle of Dante’s Inferno in Chicago about half the year"

Um, not even close. And even when it is 15F, we don't sit and home and moan about it. Life goes on.

Seriously, it's as hot as the last circle for about 20 percent of the year, but when it's 10 degrees out you sack up and deal with it.

I live in Chicago but I'm originally from the south. I feel exactly the opposite. To me, it feels a little bit warm in the summer for all of a month or two, then it's cold as hell in January and February.

You acclimate. This is why you see Chicagoans wearing shorts in March when the temperature hits 50F.

My roommate just signed up for Peapod and got our first delivery last week. I am looking forward to trying out Instacart and comparing the experience. It seems like I've been seeing an increasing number of Peapod trucks around the city the past six months (maybe it's just me), so I agree with the article's suggestion that there is demand for the service in Chicago.

Edit: In case the team is reading, I'm also curious: Does Instacart have anyone (like an Operations Manager) in Chicago, or are all the logistics being handled remotely from SF?

yes, we do have people on the ground in Chicago. And, we are looking for more ops focused people to join. Please email us at jobs@instacart.com - Thank you.

CV on its way!

I live in Chicago and a Trader Joes opened up near me about a week ago. This is the most fantastic news I've heard in a long time: cheap, good groceries delivered to my door!

Where is there a Trader Joe's that just opened up a week ago?

Evanston, IL.

If it opened up "near" you, can you explain why delivery is fantastic news? I think I do grocery shopping different than most people living in the city that find these services useful. If a grocery store is five minutes away or on the walk home from the train, just-in-time shopping seems much more practical.

1. You're going to spend 15-30 minutes in a grocery store vs 5 minutes selecting items from a website

2. 30 minutes + travel time is worth more to me than $3.99

3. Not having to deal with finding the items in the grocery store is worth its own point

It's more than just $3.99 extra. The food is marked up as well. The site live chat rep just told me to except groceries to be 10% more expensive via Instacart than if you shopped yourself.

I imagine it will be easy with things packaged goods, but when it comes to meat or fruit, you're hoping the personal shopper doesn't pick out some rotten fruit.

I don't spend anything like 15-30 mins in Trader Joes. I know where the things I want are, I might sometimes spend time browsing the wines for something new, but this is no different that browsing the same online.

I just don't get the big deal, it seems like whining to me. It really isn't that big of a deal, you take your life so seriously that you can't spend a little time looking for food you might enjoy. Maybe it's because I'm European where we the attitude to food is different.

What neighborhoods? Surely, not the whole city.

I really hope they expand to Seattle. I know Amazon Fresh exists and that Safeway does delivery here, but they don't do same day delivery and its a lot more expensive than instacart. Some competition will do this area some good. If they can keep quality up and keep prices down, I know they can dominate this whole market.

I agree. I've also found that neither carries a lot of the brands and products that I want. Or alternatively, they are out of stock.

Hoping they expand to my neighborhood soon so I can give them a try. I think there's a big future in grocery delivery because there is so much energy expended per household buying groceries.

  - Drive to grocery store
  - Roam around store picking out groceries and putting in shopping cart
  - Remove all items from shopping cart, put them on belt to checkout
  - Take all bags of purchased groceries and put in shopping cart
  - Take all bags out of shopping cart, put in car
  - When you get home, take all bags out of shopping cart and bring into house

I cannot wait until they (hopefully) come to Austin. The only chances I have to go to the grocery store are at peak hours, which makes me dread the trip, and often causes me to put it off and eat out.

Everytime I think about using instacart I see the prices are all significantly higher than me schlepping my butt down to whole foods / berkeley bowl and I don't see it as worth it.

Chicago though?

"Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta told AllThingsD that his company built a 'feasibility matrix' to determine which city it would expand to. Components of the matrix included what you might guess: car-ownership density and income. Weather was reportedly also a factor. Mehta tells TechCrunch that '33 percent of the year, Chicago has some form of precipitation' and that his company has learned in the San Francisco area that 'people just do not like grocery shopping when it’s raining.' Seattle, you might be next."

I think Chicago is a natural fit. The specific neighborhoods they picked have about 600k people in 33 square miles (a bit denser overall than San Francisco as a whole). There are a ton of residential skyscrapers in those neighborhoods, which means they probably can hit several orders in one go. 30% of Chicago households don't have a car, about the same as San Francisco. It rains or is cold about half the year, and is hot and humid a couple of months out of the remainder, which makes people not want to carry groceries home.

Agreed. Being from Chicago I think that its very natural for all the points listed above. The density of the city with the void of competition in the space (only Peapod comes to mind) make Chicago a great market to expand too. Chicago usually doesn't come to mind first as an early adopter market but given the rapid adoption of Uber (like other cities) I think the market is proving it is interested in similar services.

Agreed. I know many people who don't have a car living in the denser parts of the city, and grocery shopping (even for a single person living alone) can become a harder task simply because you can't carry a ton at once.

Yeah, the third largest city in the US with 2.7 million people. Perhaps you've heard of it?

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