[ethbro]

Curious what the value proposition would be. I mean, I can see delivery + pre-existing logistics network. Or selling better kits in stores. Or a segue to delivered groceries.

But it seems kind of antithetical to how grocery stores make money. They're low margin, high volume businesses. And this directly attacks volume.

Buying a grocery delivery startup seems like it would make way more sense as a first step.

[tyingq]

>But it seems kind of antithetical to how grocery stores make money.

It is, but they are probably looking at what Amazon has already done to brick and mortar. Then seeing the Whole Foods acquisition. And wondering where that progression ends. So, maybe this isn't the right direction, but staying put is arguably worse.

[Nition]

One of the major national supermarkets here does delivery[1]. There's also a cheaper option where you can pick up but they do the shopping for you, so you can just stop by and get your cart. Both are actually a really nice service and good value for the time you save too, but I'm not sure how popular it actually is.

You do miss out on being able to select your own fruit, meat etc, but they did a good job the couple of times we've tried it. Occasionally something you ordered isn't actually in stock, and you can choose whether you'll let them sub it out or just no include it. The ordering is per-supermarket to minimise that happening - every store has a slightly different online selection to match what they should actually have.

There's no competition here either though. If there are any other grocery delivery options around, I haven't heard of them.

[1] https://shop.countdown.co.nz

[toomanybeersies]

New World is starting to roll out grocery delivery, they're trialing it in a couple of stores in Auckland.

[KGIII]

NZ is a bit smaller than Colorado. I'd expect it to be easier to service. It makes me wonder why it hasn't already caught on? I know it's popular/common in some parts of Europe, and that it has been for a while.

[toomanybeersies]

I think it's just that everyone is close enough to a supermarket, it's easy enough to just go there on the way back from work, or just pop to the supermarket. It's not worth paying to get someone to do the groceries for you.

I don't think I've ever lived further than a 15 minute walk from a supermarket.

[KGIII]

I think that's also true in Europe. I've never lived in the UK, for example, but I've stayed there for six months while working. Food delivery was very common in London.

At the time, there was no web interface and you had to make a phone call. Still, it was pretty common.

Curiously, when I was really young (1960s America), I remember a grocery store that delivered to our house. We even had a diaper delivery/disposal service, but I digress. I'm not sure if it was a local thing, nor am I sure when it stopped. I do know that it existed in two different localities, because we moved a lot. (Military family.) I'm pretty sure it wasn't always just a grocery list, but that they had meals that came with a recipe card and the ingredients. The recipe cards still existed when my mother passed away. I have no idea if they still exist. I suspect not.

So, at one point, it was at least in use and then fell out of fashion. Now, it's coming around again.

Anyhow, thanks for the info. It seems to be gaining in popularity. Maybe there's room for you to get in on the ground floor and make some money.

[x2f10]

>But it seems kind of antithetical to how grocery stores make money. They're low margin, high volume businesses. And this directly attacks volume.

Not necessarily. The margin on meal kits are stronger than the ingredients alone (e.g. sliced fruits & veggies). In relation to the volume, meal kit buyers still need to eat. The hungry buyer must cook at home (w/ groceries), go to a restaurant, or buy a second meal kit. To me, this sounds like an attack on the fast food / restaurant industry. Grocery stores can market these meal kits as more affordable, healthier, and 'hip'.

[CapnCrunchie]

>Grocery stores can market these meal kits as more affordable, healthier, and 'hip'.

I did a meal kit service for a little while, and my biggest complaint was that it was not any cheaper than if I were to go out to eat, but I still had to cook the meal and clean up afterwards. If there were a cost savings versus going to eat at a restaurant, I would have kept the subscription.

[chimeracoder]

Where do you live?

I had the same experience with Blue Apron, but I also live in Manhattan, where it's about 20-30% cheaper for a single person to get takeout/delivery than it is to buy groceries and cook - and that's before accounting for the cost of time.

Comparing the prices in the suburbs, though, that's not the case. And as soon as you add a second person (or more) to the mix, of course, it becomes cheaper to cook.

[pbreit]

Where can you eat for less than $10 besides McDonald’s or a pizza place?

[chimeracoder]

> Where can you eat for less than $10 besides McDonald’s or a pizza place?

Depends on where you live. In New York, for example, it's incredibly easy to find good food for under $10, even for dinner.

[rrdharan]

I live in New York (four years in Manhattan and a couple more in Brooklyn).

I think "incredibly easy" is a gross exaggeration. I supposed you might be talking about the street carts, but street meat is questionably healthy / "good". The deeper you get into parts of Queens it's certainly possible, but I think the previous poster had in mind some sort of sit down establishment rather than street food.

[chimeracoder]

I live midtown, and yes, it is incredibly easy to find prepared food for dinner that is cheaper than what these meal kit services charge, or even cheaper than the equivalent in groceries. I'm not talking about street carts either.

[amigoingtodie]

There is money there.

People are willing to pay a premium for convenience.

Not having to travel to the grocery store, not having to wait in line, not getting mad at the person who cannot bag your groceries, and not having to buy excess amounts of ingredients, nor measuring them, I consider valuable.

Also, Plated offers meals w/ ingredients that would take me a full day of travel to source.

If somebody is already willing to travel to the store, why would grocery delivery increase their existing customer spend?

[ethbro]

The question is whether a grocery store doing meal prep can extract more profit than they already get on selling food. And I'm not convinced people are willing to pay enough to make that worth the meal prep companies' time.

Furthermore, we already have folks who are experts at that: we call them restaurants.

So I see meal prep from grocery stores (so losing the "secret organic small farm ingredients" sauce a lot of them bandy about) as being targeted at: (1) people who want a price point lower than restaurants, (2) are willing to pay more than grocery stores, (3) derive enough benefit from "cooking light" that they prefer meal kits over restaurants.

... That doesn't seem like a huge demographic. Which makes me think most of the meal companies are Uber-like unsustainable VC-propped up businesses, except without end-to-end automation on the horizon to save them.

With grocery delivery, the key would be regularizing logistics for some portion of their stock a la Amazon subscribe and save (and thereby optimizing inventory and saving on waste).

[hkmurakami]

Well, the take away salads and wraps and other to-go options have become very popular within supermarkets (and have eaten into sales at fast casual type restaurants).