Archives for online grocery shopping

Grocery Delivery Then and Now

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published a compelling comparison of two popular grocery delivery companies, one from the 90s, Webvan, and one from today, Instacart. In Webvan’s heyday, the company was making $239 million in revenue with almost $441 million of venture capital invested. Today, Instacart makes $100 million in revenue and just recently…

USPS Will Expand Grocery Delivery Pilot

The USPS announced plans to expand its early-morning package delivery service pilot for 2 years in San Francisco.  Currently, the USPS delivers Amazon Fresh totes to consumers’ homes during a 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. delivery window.  The approved pilot would allow these operations to continue, and open up the pilot to additional retailers and…

Whole Foods Partners with Instacart

Whole Foods announces a new partnership with grocery delivery start-up Instacart, to deliver groceries from their stores directly to their customers’ homes. The service will be immediately available in the 15 U.S. cities where Instacart already operates, and the two companies are also testing an in-store pickup service in select stores in Boston and Austin….

Multi-Channel Moves In House

When eCommerce first gained a lot of volume, retailers built dedicated warehouses to ship orders.  This process resulted in the creation of two inventory pools, one for online, and one for in-store.  Often these two inventory pools are separated by a firewall, and cannot communicate.  This makes for a frustrating experience as a shopper; how…

Location, location, location, in E-commerce

E-commerce opens an exciting world of new possibilites, new knowledge, and new products. Thanks to the internet, people now want (and can get) incredibly diverse and random items, reflecting their individual taste preferences. Or do they? In a recently released book by Wharton professor David Bell, titled “Why Location is (Still) Everything, e-commerce is revealed to have changed surprisingly little…

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