Instacart is in Atlanta!

Yes, yes, we all know that Webvan is known to be the “largest dot-com bust in history”. However, I’ve always thought the idea was needed if someone could just pull it off. Ahead of its time, like most great things.

And now, perhaps, the future is here. Instacart is in Atlanta and I’m already their biggest fan. They describe themselves as:

Instacart is a grocery delivery service that delivers in as little as an hour! We connect you with Personal Shoppers in your area who pick up and deliver your groceries from your favorite local stores.

When I signed in, it immediately connected me to the Costco where we already shop. Since we have a kid circus at our house, its exceedingly difficult for my wife to find time to haul them to the grocery store at least once a week. We intend to give Instacart as much of our business as they can handle!

Sign up and give them a try. Can you tell I’m excited? :)

3 Comments

  1. tomerific on July 1, 2014 at 9:07 am

    Unfortunately it is not available in the burbs yet — that’s OTP for you!



  2. Del Ross on July 1, 2014 at 10:18 am

    almost a reason to move into town. Almost.



  3. greghorowitz on July 2, 2014 at 8:54 pm

    We’ve had Fresh Direct in New York for years, and I have a family member who worked there for a long time, so I have some familiarity with this business model. Groceries are all about operations; you can’t digitize perishable produce, and margins are always going to be razor thin. Fresh Direct has survived because they built up an entire warehouse in lieu of a retail store and spent more than a decade honing their operations. Also, they serve the most densely populated city in the country (their efforts to expand outside New York haven’t been particularly successful).

    I don’t know much about Instacart, but this article says they mark up grocery store prices by 20 percent: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/technology/personaltech/online-grocery-start-up-takes-page-from-sharing-services.html?_r=1. That makes sense: they’re buying the groceries retail, plus the cost of the shopper. I guess there might be some people willing to pay that much for the convenience, but it seems like a really steep premium, and makes me wonder how scalable the idea is.



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