Vancouver Grocery Delivery and Online Grocery Stores - History and Perspective

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(Free-Press-Release.com) February 26, 2011 -- Vancouver Grocery Delivery ~History, Savings and Convenience

Online grocery stores: good or bad? History suggests that online grocery stores are not popular, but most history looks only at one very prominent example of a very large online grocery store going bankrupt. This online grocery store~ you may have heard of them~ was called Web Van.

Web Van started in 1999 and closed their doors in 2001 during the dotcom bubble. Up to $30,000,000.00 was spent building each warehouse, leading to a total start up cost of over one billion dollars! They failed, and were bought by Amazon.com in 2001. But what business articles don’t commonly acknowledge is the customer’s perspective; when Web Van closed, they had over 750,000 active customers in the 7 cities they serviced: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Seattle, Chicago and Portland. That’s a huge number of customers retained in less than 2 years.
The problem with the grocery delivery company was not that people weren’t interested in their service, the problem was that they were unprepared and overspent, so their profit couldn’t cover the expenses of over one billion dollars in liabilities. Also, since the 2001 dotcom crash, there’s been an exponential growth in sales over the Internet and more to come in the future.
Web Van’s public failure has led many people to believe that online grocery stores are an undesired market for consumers. That idea cannot be further from the truth, especially in metropolitan areas.

Grocery Delivery is a very large market in physical grocery stores. This is where you go to the grocery store, shop, choose your items, bring them to the till, pay for them, and then leave them behind. The grocery store will deliver them to you later, for an additional fee. This is even more time consuming than an average trip to the grocery store, because you still have to get there, find what you want, pay, wait for someone to bring the groceries to the back, and then wait at home over a period of time for your groceries to arrive. Still, this is a great alternative if you’ve walked or taken public transit to the grocery store, and it would be a hassle to carry your groceries home.

An Online Grocery Store takes it one step further, so you save a lot more trouble than simply carrying your own bags. You’re saving time, money, gas, stress, and the environment. While writing this article, I was actually comparing prices, and the prices from the online grocery stores were not that much different from the actual grocery stores. The reason Web Van retained so many customers in such a short amount of time is not because of advertising, or their expensive warehouses; it is because people saw value in the service. A close friend of mine is an avid user of one of the grocery delivery services offered here in Vancouver, and she says she will almost never go to a grocery store again (unless she forgets a couple things, or she wants to compare prices). The time and energy she saves now gives her a lot more time to bring her kids places, other than the grocery store.

Some reputable Online Grocery Stores / Grocery Delivery Companies in Vancouver I have researched are :

skyrisefoods.com ~ very reasonable prices, great reviews, great service, amazing produce. * this is the one my friend swears by*

spud.ca ~a little bit more expensive, but deals with only organic local foods, great company, has been around for a while.


Benefits of Online Grocery shopping
1. No driving to the grocery store: saves gas and kilometres on your car

2. No parking at grocery store: saves on metered parking in metro areas, and headache
3. No physical shopping carts
4. No Long Line Ups
5. No kids screaming and crying and begging
6. Less Distraction
7. Saves the environment: fewer cars on the road, as well as groceries usually not delivered in plastic bags.
8. More time for yourself, your family, studying, working, yoga, sports, friends, etc.
9. BEST of all you don’t have to carry your groceries.

Cons of Online Grocery Shopping
1. You don’t get to choose your own produce at a Vancouver online grocery store

2. You don’t get to meet people in your local Vancouver online grocery store
3. You don’t have store brands to choose from
4. You do have to be home at a specified time to receive your groceries. (However, I’ve noticed some Vancouver Grocery Delivery companies will leave the purchase at your door if you are not home.)

It is relatively easy to shop online, and even though the first time can take over 30 minutes, but after you have ordered several times from the same Vancouver Online Grocery Store it is generally done on average in 10 minutes or less, And then you just fill in your information and select a delivery time window and that’s it.
Thanks for Reading.

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