[qq66]

The major difference is not the size of the market. The major difference is that Instacart piggybacks on the existing grocery store network, meaning that they don't have to pay for the overhead of a big warehouse. That lets them scale up with their user base instead of having to invest a lot of money up front in warehouses.

[Animats]

So does Safeway. The trouble with doing this out of grocery stores is that the order system doesn't know what's in inventory, and some fraction of your items won't show up.

Amazon Fresh is doing this with their own warehouses and robots. They know their own inventory, and will probably crush these manual-picking operations.

[bduerst]

Amazon has never had to deal with their own delivery fleets before, or perishable goods in their warehouses. While it's true Amazon has other revenue streams, Fresh is still just an experiment at this point.

It's a race to see who can take the market, and Amazon is taking a slower, infrastructure based approach. It will be interesting to see if they will see it through to the end.