Comment by rsbrown | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rsbrown | Hacker News Reader

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Spot on, my friend. To highlight a few items:

"Excellent interface"

We have built a streamlined interface that is uniquely designed to handle grocery shopping. We believe that there is a fundamental difference in shopping for groceries online and the way we shop for other consumer merchandise (such as clothes or books). Being fast, intuitive and discoverable are the overarching goals.

"you should seriously consider delivery"

At a later date, perhaps. "Logistical nightmare" is absolutely right. When/if we do delivery, I want to treat it as an outsourced add-on priced at/near cost (which will still mean a hefty delivery charge in low population density areas).

"I also love the possibilities for the store itself"

Absolutely. In addition to your suggestions, consider the long-term opportunities related to merchandise packaging and private label goods. Customers are no longer walking the aisles making buying decisions based on physical packaging. The right packaging/private label strategy (think Trader Joe's on steroids) could eventually lead to some amazing gross margins.

Actually, I like the fact that this isn't delivery. I would expect to pay more for that, and driving to the grocery store would be no big deal if I didn't have to go in.

One thing that could make things speedier would be something like an RFID tag in my car that gets scanned as I enter the parking lot, so you'd know what customers were about to pick up their groceries. (You'd have to carefully consider the privacy implications for people being tracked elsewhere, though.)

Having worked with warehouses and warehousing systems, this is actually a real problem.

A normal non-refrigerated warehouse can pick items (grab from the shelf) well in advance of the "pick up" time for carriers, so orders are ready to go when the truck arrives.

In Ernie's model, it becomes a challenge having items ready when customers arrive, yet minimize the amount of time perishables are out of refrigeration.

This could be addressed a few ways : 1. Asking the customer roughly when they expect to pick up their orders 2. Staging orders in refrigerated and non-refrigerated sections for quick final assembly at pick-up 3. A mechanism like you've described to give some advanced warning to the warehouse.

Very interesting stuff indeed -- I'm envisioning some wicked cool cross and upselling opportunities with punchfork.com's API.

Option number 2 is what we have planned. We have been working with a warehouse engineer that worked for a failed grocery delivery service. Note: it was delivery that killed them, not the challenges of warehouse management.

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