[notyourday]

Which is why Instacart is going to get crushed. Fee exists because instacart is not an integrated service. Supermarket margins are thin. They will only shrink more.

There's no reason why grocery store employees cannot fill orders - in fact grocery stores that do their own deliveries do exactly that. What those grocery stores lack is a platform to synchronize active inventory in a store and what is displayed which is exactly what Amazon brings to Whole Foods in addition to "intelligent" order routing:

There are three whole foods in Manhattan that are convenient to downtown - however, during the rush our one needs to be an idiot to send an order to the one on 7th Ave rather than the one in Tribeca, which is definitely not the case during the late afternoon.

What really amazes me is that both executives and people who work for companies like Instacart simply stomp their feet and say "But we are different! Why do you hate us?!" rather than address deficiency of the business model. Want to have a shot at competing with AmazonWF? Become a sub of Ahold, Kroger, Albertsons or SuperValu. Otherwise you die.

P.S. I dislike Amazon. I do, however, have to admit that buying WF was a brilliant move.