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Comment by alasdair_ | Hacker News Reader

People will pay a premium for non-food items that they need today. For example: you’re hosting a party and have run out of wine or plastic cups or a wine ipener or whatever.

Tampons, toilet paper, razors, diapers, etc. are also things people often need right now and can’t easily get them (any parent with young children knows how much it sucks to run out of something at a point where the child is asleep - do you wake them to go to the store?)

Even random stuff like home improvement items - it really sucks to be covered in paint and then realize you need some sandpaper or whatever - having to clean off and go to the store in the middle if a project is a real pain.

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Well people will pay premium as you describe but those are very few people. For vast number of middle class folks all these things are basic planning.

I am surprised, with all the notes / planning/ calendar/ reminder software being there along with incredible array of personal devices to store them, people can't combine these basic requirements with regular store trips.

That sounds good on paper but doesn’t work in reality.

To deliver products quickly, you need inventory close at hand, aka “dark stores”. To justify the massive upfront investment in dark stores, you need either need massive volume, or you need high average order value.

Massive volume doesn’t work because rapid delivery is niche and delivery fees means that people can’t use them as frequently. Plus, dark stores simply can’t carry enough inventory to do large volumes.

The only option is to increase the average order size. But because dark stores carry limited inventory, you can’t upsell much.

Not to forget that you need also quite substantial inventory. The stuff might not be perishable, but still you need to tie up capital in it. And you can't have too little either when there is demand spikes you can't fulfil orders or customers won't come back when you can't supply stuff.

Also a tough marketing pitch - if you emphasize "rapid" delivery, and you can't deliver in those 15-20 minutes, you'll leave customers dissatisfied. If you offer them the more realistic 30-45 minutes, you'll leave customers wondering why they're paying you the premium.

Especially in situations where you absolutely need something delivered immediately, the difference between 15-20 and 40-45 minutes is enormous.

I suppose it’s all about finding a small enough geographic area where a sufficient number of these emergencies occur for sufficiently rich people.

You are reminding me about the startup that did on demand single avocado deliveries for 700% markup with only SF/Oakland as a delivery area.

I'd love to read more about this, do you remember the startup's name?

Took a while to figure out, I kept getting "millenials ruined by avocado toast" articles while searching.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160814085512/http://www.goavoc...

You are describing bad planning as emergencies. They are just bad planning and there is a cost associated with it. That cost is not reflected in the price paid, so these startups run at a loss.

"Just in time life" is a bad idea.

>Even random stuff like home improvement items - it really sucks to be covered in paint and then realize you need some sandpaper or whatever - having to clean off and go to the store in the middle if a project is a real pain.

How many people are going to pay $25 or whatever to get that sandpaper delivered?

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