Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious if Lyft and Uber will attempt to work with national grocery store chains to handle delivery. Most grocery stores have some sort of pick-up at store. It seems like Lyft/Uber could be used to then convert that pick-up at store into grocery delivery if they were integrated into the grocery stores checkout process.

That way Lyft and Uber wouldn't have to necessarily create their own storefronts like Instacart has and the grocery chains would be less worried about being commoditized since the grocery chains would control the customer relationship.

I would definitely like to use multiple grocery delivery services so as to keep multiple grocery stores in business to avoid having Amazon/Whole Foods be a single point of failure, but the grocery chains' delivery is backlogged.

It seems counter intuitive for Lyft and Uber to not be finding ways to keep their drivers. Otherwise they will end up working for Amazon doing Whole Foods delivery. In fact, IIRC Lyft was actively encouraging them to go work for Amazon/WF [1].

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21197699/lyft-amazon-coro...

Why should they use a third party when said chains already have a huge workforce? They can ask them to make deliveries, pay them good including a hefty compensation for using their own car (an X amount per mile and / or hour).

Uber / Lyft need to be put out of business, not given extra work to keep them in business. Their drivers need to be given a proper contract, pay by the hour / week / month instead of this fucky zero-hour contract, because as it turns out everyone that depends on work from Uber is left in the dirt right now, because they're not actually employees.

Because they aren't doing it.

That would not be very efficient though, instead of a chilled single truck carrying a days worth of deliveries targeting one geographic area you’d have 20 times as many uber drivers turning up at random times. All of whom have to be paid, not to mention the burning of fuel.

I don’t think uber have the right setup for this and even if they did I can’t see how they have a competitive edge.

Not more inefficient than everyone driving their single occupancy car to grocery store and buy stuff, as things worked before the pandemic.

They wouldn’t be better than the regular grocery delivery truck, but they have spare capacity when the demand for grocery deliveries has probably skyrocketed.

I wouldn’t think there are enough refrigerated trucks available in the world for grocery stores to all scale their delivery fleets rapidly at the same time.

Plus grocery stores wouldn’t necessarily want more trucks if they anticipate this pandemic-fueled demand being temporary. If the stores buy more trucks, the manufacturers build more trucks to meet that demand, what happens with all the extra trucks once this pandemic is over? Will all the new delivery customers keep getting their groceries delivered, or will many switch back to shopping at the store?

Given both those factors, UberEats style deliveries for groceries could make decent sense as a temporary measure.

As far as I know Instacart shoppers are using personal cars for their deliveries. I don't believe they require refrigerated trucks.

Agreed Uber/Lyft might not be setup for groceries just yet but it seems like it'd be pretty easy to provide Kroger and Safeway with an API hook to schedule an Uber/Lyft driver for pick-up and delivery (versus setting up a store front and sync'ing up all the inventory with Kroger and Safeway like Instacart did/does).

Lyft/Uber could batch the deliveries, deliver within an hour specified by the customer... those companies already have data on ratings, they can pull the best drivers on-demand and offer premium pay that's still substantially less than the overhead of a store's truck + driver... plus offering last-mile logistics for multiple stores allows for greater efficiency over store-dedicated trucks.

Insulated boxes, bags with ice, or have the stores define packaging... maybe the store packages goods separately in reusable cloth / insulated bags as appropriate for goods with a deposit for return (in-store or during the next delivery).

We don't need efficiency right now, we need resiliency. Stock is inconsistent and smaller suppliers/grocers are at serious risk. I don't care if necessities cost a little more or take a little longer to show up. I do care that my family stays fed and healthy.

That sounds a lot like Uber Eats though. It might even be more efficient than Uber Eats, actually, since instead of going to restaurants all over the city, the drivers can just pick up from a couple specific places.

I'm guessing you are not in the US :-) Over here, a lot of grocery delivery is done with personal cars, uber style.

Don't want to sound too much like a shill, but Peapod and https://shop.usepepper.com/ (NYC only) operate more like how you describe

Uber Eats and Deliveroo both have grocery stores on their platforms where I live (London).

It's an ok add-on for "emergencies" but can't compete with the streamlined delivery solutions on cost.

In Canada take out places are adding grocery boxes, wine and beer to their take out menu's. Seems like this may not even need to involve grocery stores. Why not get some essentials if you are already getting delivery.

In my opinion, every solution that uses existing infrastructure and services is a good one. Because time is the main issue.

One big difference between this crisis and past catastrophes, which a lot of organizations are well prepared to handle, is, that noye all infrastructure is intact. Processes and supply chains are disrupted on a global scale, so.

Comparing that to, say, the tsunami catastrophes. In these cases, infrastructure was destroyed locally or, at the worst case, regional. The challenge was to build ad-hoc infrastructure to get stuff out of the global supply chains to the region. This approach doesn't work now.

I like the idea if piggybacking on food delivery services. There should be at least one in every village, or at least near by. It could run decentralized. And the principal would scale pretty well.

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