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Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

Very few people need many groceries within 15 minutes (or several hours or even same day).

What I am surprised we have not yet seen is "Trader Joes online". Not for Trader Joes to do it (they seem disinterested and very focused on an in-store experience/model). But for some startup or legacy company to make such an offering. Limited SKUs, terrific value, optimized for online ordering/storage/deliervy, etc.

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There are a number of subscription grocery delivery companies in the UK that work on a fixed delivery day model. i.e. you sign up and based on your address you're given a day that all deliveries will happen on.

This works by having fixed routes, known ahead of time, which optimise for local driver knowledge (it's supposed to be the same driver every week), and therefore can afford to be really quite cheap for delivery.

I like the model and I'd like to see it applied to more types of food delivery.

If you are talking about actual Trader Joe's stock, I suspect you'd be locked up in a lawsuit pretty fast. IIRC, they (TJ's) successfully shut down a store-front operation like this in Vancouver (or some other Canadian city?) by a mix of lawsuits and identifying all the buyers then banning them - game of whack-a-mole but one they were willing to play. You could argue no harm as they didn't even operate or plan to operate in the country (and I think they did argue that).

I think GP just means TJ-like, as in limited # of items, primarily or all private label, etc.

That could work, but it's probably going to be a hard sell at first before you've established the name and trust in it.

Is that not what Amazon Fresh is, or is supposed to be, in the US?

(disclaimer: work for DoorDash, but in an unrelated org)

No, that was what PrimeNow was. PrimeNow is discontinued last year.

Amazon Fresh is scheduled fairly large delivery windows, usually at least a day out. If you get super lucky there might be an available slot later the same day but not often if city.

I was thinking MUCH more curated inventory. Private label for many/most of the staples. Relatively high quality at reasonable prices. Mostly non-organic with some organic options.

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