Instacart: Crowdsourcing Your Grocery Shopping(businessweek.com) |
Instacart: Crowdsourcing Your Grocery Shopping(businessweek.com) |
I don't understand this at all and would really appreciate any enlightenment.
What has changed in technology in the past 12 years to enable home grocery delivery? Broadband? Cloud storage? HTML5? AJAX? Flat design? Mobile? And if any of these (Mobile being the most likely), how would they affect viability?
I suspect the thing that has changed more is us. We are probably more open to "low tech" evolutions: lack of privacy, increased trust of strangers, crowd sourcing, always being connected. Or maybe some clever hackers figured out a better way of doing something new with the same basic technology.
Frankly, I can't imagine what these 10 programmers would be doing today that couldn't have been done in 2001.
The 1% don't use Uber, TaskRabbit, or Instacart; they have actual personal drivers, servants, and chefs.
On a positive note (for these companies), I don't see the middle class coming back any time soon.
-- For the user, it's easier than ever to place an order. Internet connection speeds are fast, smartphones have snappy native apps, 3G is everywhere -- so you can order groceries on the ride home. You can quickly download 100 images of products on the bus ride home and pick the ones you want (for example).
-- For Instacart, processing those orders at scale is also easier than ever. EC2 instances are cheap and easily provisioned, payment processing is easier thanks to a bevy of services, and online use of credit cards doesn't have the riskiness and stigma associated with it in the 90s.
-- For the shopper going out to buy groceries, communication is easier than the 90s. With broadband and smartphones, they can send updates back to Instacart servers faster and have them processed automatically (as opposed to the 90s, where a cellphone call would have information transmitted by voice, which would have to be processed by a human). Smartphones alone enable a larger volume of information to be communicated back to Instacart, and have it be as simple as the shopper checking off items purchased or scratching off items not available.
-- For Instacart again, dynamic routing, inventory updates, and scheduling are much easier (in theory) because of the timely updates from shoppers, as well as the enormous amount of computing power available. Couple that with GPS tracking and you enable some sort of accountability for the shoppers, as well as a better customer experience for the user ("your shopper is 3 minutes away, on Van Ness...")
It's similar to how UPS revolutionized package shipping with point-by-point delivery updates.
That said, as a former Instacart patron, I feel Instacart has a long way to go before it's as entrenched as Amazon.
1. When did UPS revolutionize package shipping? 5 years ago, 10 years ago, or longer? 2. Couldn't someone who ran a delivery service (i.e. UPS, DHL, FedEx, etc) have been in place to do this sort of thing 10 years ago or even longer? I mean sure, it's easier and more accessible than ever now, but it doesn't look like a showstopper to me. The convenience of having someone else do your groceries for you is so convenient for most people. It's on the level of convenience of paying the neighbor's kid to mow your lawn.
The Webvan implosion was so big that it left a lasting stigma around that entire business model that made people assume that you'd need a Webvan-size spending budget to ever attempt it again.
Instacart has a clever twist of offloading the actual transportation and storage, the most expensive and complex aspect of grocery delivery, work onto self-appointed local providers who solve that hard part themselves independently of Instacart.
What has changed in technology in the past 12 years to
enable home grocery delivery?
Looks like Instacart is on the right path to a massive IPO :)
Good work guys!
Personally, I use Instacart every week to buy all of my groceries. I live in Palo Alto, and don't own a car. With Instacart, that's easy, since I don't have to worry about going to the grocery store, and lugging groceries back and forth in a car. So while it may be more expensive to use Instacart, my reduced burn-rate of not having to own and maintain a vehicle makes it a net cost-savings.
Generally, that order reflects what I use a car most for (i.e. Most of the time, my car is for commuting.)
Instacart helps remove the need for transporting goods. Amazon helps remove the rest. And I work at a location that makes commuting via bicycle + public transportation extremely easy.
So I don't need a car to commute or to transport goods. So for the few times that I need a car for entertainment, it doesn't make sense to own one. It makes more sense to rent a car from a local Hertz, or to use ZipCar for those one-off situations.
So Instacart is part of the solution, it isn't the entire solution.
Second: As much as any of us can make comprehensive grocery lists, there's a serendipity to the grocery runs that I'm not ready to give up. Snap decisions can be enablers for future meals. "I need 1 lb. of chicken breast but, hey, wait… maybe I'll get 2 lb. and make double and freeze the rest for next week?" … "Oh shit… tomato paste! Definitely used the last of that a couple days ago; better get some more." It was a no-brainer to ditch the video rental store, but you can't browse fresh groceries from an Apple TV.
Third: I'm not willing to trust a stranger to pick out an avocado that's just the right ripeness for my purposes, nor do I want to type out just how ripe I want my avocado this time.
EDIT: clarity
One important advantage instacart has over the in-store experience is the filtering and sorting of goods. The amount of toilet paper or cereal to choose from is absurd.
EDIT: After looking at the web app there appears to be no sorting/filtering capabilities but only search. Bummer.
That's assuming you get what you ordered in the first place, and ripeness of an avocado is barely touching on these problems.
My boyfriend has been experimenting with ordering cat food from various sources in SF. Necessary backstory: regular Fancy Feast comes in two categories of textures: Classic which is a pâté style, and everything else (Flaked, Grilled, Sliced...) which is anything but. Our cat exclusively eats non-pâté food. So we order a 24 can box of flaked/grilled/sliced beef+poultry or seafood, and what shows up at the door? Instacart, Postmates, and Google Shopping Express all got it wrong (I bet AmazonFresh will too when it starts up here) - in fact, I can't think of a single time a person got the cat food order _right_ even though when we go shopping on our own knowing "not classic" we never have a problem reading the boxes clearly labeled as such... To their credit they all resolved the problem, but.. both of us and our roommate order from all three services all the time and something always gets screwed up like that.
If you can live with that, then awesome. We mostly do for convenience's sake, until we get key limes as a substitute for persian limes meant for margaritas.
Jk, congrats! Instacart rocks and aside from delivering groceries, is creating work and income to a lot of people who really need it.
The so called "99%" won't be saved by politicians, but rather companies like Instacart.
What might bring me back is a cost incentive on repeated purchases, say by offering 10% off if I sign up for regular monthly deliveries of common household items.
But it peaked in 2000: http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/about/history/2007.html?WT....