Quick Grocery Delivery Debuts in Decatur/Atlanta
Decatur Metro | June 26, 2014 | 9:20 amGwyneth points out this AJC article this morning…
Want to do your grocery shopping in one hour without leaving your house? Check out Instacart, the new online grocery delivery service that debuted in Atlanta today.
…Originally launched in San Francisco, the service allows you to select grocery items from multiple stores and have them delivered in an hour for $5.99 on orders above $35. Currently in Atlanta, you can order from Kroger or Costco and your first Instacart order (over $10) is delivered free.
If you’re not a Costco member, this is a great way around that barrier, since Instacart does not require a Costco membership to order items from the store. The company expects to add other stores in the future. Other cities have stores such as Whole Foods Market and Safeway available through Instacart.
…For now, Instacart is only available ITP for neighborhoods including Buckhead, Midtown, Downtown, Decatur, Virginia-Highland, Brookhaven, West Atlanta, Lenox and Old Fourth Ward. It will expand to areas OTP in the coming weeks, O’Connor says.
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Great! I’ll look forward to trying this. I really liked Webvan.
Me too. It was my gift for new mothers for awhile. Hope this lasts. I plan to try it out real soon.
Poor WebVan–I always thought it was before its time. Hope InstaCart makes a good go of it!
I still have my WebVan magnet on my garage refrigerator!
Wow. Keeping hope alive for real!
I still have 5,000 shares of WBVN! I’m taking offers though.
I would pay twice the price if they offered the same service for the DeKalb Farmers Market. Avoiding that madhouse on the weekends is worth quite the premium.
I ran into a guy buying 8 lbs of hummus one day at ydfm… Got talking and he was buying for a company that did grocery delivery. Said I could get anything they carried at ydfm. I so wish I had thought to write down the company name.
I just tried it. The delivery was fast, and it was pretty easy to use the online system. I ordered something that wasn’t on their list (Ezekiel frozen sprouted wheat bread) and they found it just fine. The item prices seem to be higher than those in the store, so you’re not just paying a delivery fee — you’re also paying a bit more for your groceries. I’m not sure how much the markup is. There’s also an option to tip the deliverer, which I did. She came in a private car — more like pizza delivery. I suspect the drivers don’t get paid much, so tips will probably be important to their livelihood. That also means this service is probably easily scalable — not a lot of overhead for instacart. Not sure I’d use it again, although as Worthless German says, if they ever offered farmer’s market service I’d pay a premium for delivery. Anyway, I’m reasonably satisfied. The cherries weren’t crushed.
I looked at their site earlier, and I would say their markup is around 20%. But, you are paying a premium to have it delivered, so that shouldn’t be unexpected.
Do they take coupons? I was an early adopter of Peapod in Chicago. Awesome for someone in a third floor walkup that required me to double-park, go through three gates and up three floors. I think the charges were a straight markup on the food but the prices for the food were the same as in the store. The bright side was coupons. I never use them, but in this model I did and it was simple. When they arrived, you paid them, handed them your coupons, and then that savings was taken off of your NEXT order. They did all the accounting back at the office. So clean and easy. You only missed out on any final order you would make, but the coupons would usually pay for the markup plus some.
That’s a smart way to handle it. Good option!
Isn’t there a reason the other in this space went out of business years ago? Why is this one different? Are the deliverers independent operators?
The latter. Just tried it. Webvan had its own warehouses and distribution. Evidently this is just about the delivery. I got a call saying that many of my items weren’t available at the Little Kroger. No kidding. Next time I’m going to put in the comment section that they need to go to the Big Kroger. And they need to figure out a way for us to use our Kroger Plus card. But I expect that the first day of a new service would have some kinks.
At Kroger you can use your phone number on file as “alt ID” in lieu of having actual Kroger Plus card
G Buck — WBVN went under due to huge IT Infra and Distribution investments. Couldn’t get scale in time and then the .com bubble dried up any additional capital. Maybe GBS will do a case study on them someday…
As was pointed out, WebVan tried to maintain their own inventory and sophisticated (read expensive) distribution system in addition to delivering using their vehicles and employees.. Instacart only does the the picking from somebody else’s inventory and delivery using contractors. Big difference in the business model.
FYI that, while my first experience with Instacart was only okay, given the shopper’s selection of the Little, instead of the Big, Kroger, I got good response to my feedback form. Someone responded that they would note the point about the broader selection of the Big Kroger and that they are still improving their store instructions to shoppers. Then they gave me free delivery on my next purchase.
Now my only beef with Instacart is its name. Web Van was better. In fact, it’s so stuck in my head that I can’t seem to replace it with Instacart.