Why I built Instacart for local grocery stores in 10 days
Two weeks ago, my father waited 45 minutes in line to get into our local Costco only to be let down by the limited selection and lack of fresh produce. After an hour and a half, the only things he managed to get were eggs, milk , and a determination to get his family their vegetables.
He drove around, looking for anywhere open that had boxes or bins of green leaves and was surprised to find that most of our local groceries were still stocked.
With the rise of online delivery services like Amazon Fresh and Instacart we've been given great convenience, but just like with our retail stores we've left mom and pops that are the backbone of our communities behind.
There's no reason why we can't have our cake and eat it too. We should be able to have the convenience of ordering what we need and support our local grocery stores. Plus, in the event of a global pandemic keeping our travels to a contained space is made much easier if we don't have to drive miles and wait in long lines just to get groceries.
As a software engineer I'm driven by solving problems, and when presented with one that affects me personally, I start to obsess.
I spent the next ten days spending every hour I wasn't working, sleeping or eating working on designing, building and iterating. I made sure I stayed focused on the core flow -- a product catalog, checkout and payment, order fulfillment and payouts for businesses. I knew if I spent too much time building out an admin dashboard, or fine tuning email templates that I'd lose track of the vision.
By making sure I was stuck to a vision, over ten days I pivoted twice and re-implemented entire flows three times. Since everything was the bare minimum it needed to be, I didn't feel like I was stuck retrofitting old code into a new flow, even though it was only a few days old.
What resulted was Grocerneed, an online platform to give our mom and pops a way to fight back against the big guys. A demo storefront can be found here
Thanks for reading, I'd love your feedback.
This is awesome. I'd focus all of your initial marketing efforts on reaching the grocery stores, at least until you reach a certain coverage in an area. Practically, what I'd suggest is to make the only CTA on your page be "I want to sell online". You don't need grocery buyers to sign up yet, right? Or at least, that should be your secondary concern.
Good idea, I'll A/B test CTAs to see what visitors are hitting the landing page. I'm casting a wide net, so I'm trying to build a unified message for both use cases.
I think a pin on the map type location selection is better than the Zipcode approach. The site looks sleek. Awesome work.
That's a good point. I'll use the browser location API as well.
Brilliant! I'm from NYC and the amount of bodegas, convenience stores, etc. that could use this is insane.
What's your plan to grow this?
"The convenience, mom and pop stores market expected to reach a value of nearly $4496.88 billion by 2022"
https://www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/report/convenience-mom-and-pop-stores-global-market-report
100%! There's no reason I can order a chopped cheese at 12am but not anything actually stocked on their shelves.
I've been reaching out to local grocery stores around my area to work through flows -- if you know anyone personally that would be interested, direct them my way! [email protected]
I'm also launching a signup form for grocery stores in the coming days once I iron out onboarding.
This is great! Have you found grocery stores who are interested and if so, what was the best way to approach them to use your product? Thanks!
You started instacart. Nice concept. Have you checked on the progress and tweeked anything yet. Love to keep up
Just sharing what I've observed here in the bay area during this crisis. What I've found at least in the bay area is that local grocery stores all use https://gethomesome.com/ to host their sites. The platform is an all-in-one solution that stores like. It helps manage inventory, online shopping, supports pick up or delivery at store chosen time windows, supports personalization on purchase limits and max distance from the store. For even smaller stores without sites, they simply share their phone number. folks text them a list of what they want and get a time slot for pick-up or delivery in return. Have you had a chance to speak with local grocery stores about this? I think it's nice that you are trying to do something here. If your solution can just fit into they day to day operation with ease, that'd be great.
Yeah so as @nearfal mentioned, inventory management is something that a lot of grocery stores don't want to do. I've decided to stick to the core flow and not build something stores aren't asking for. A lot of stores around me are ordering through google forms and texts too, so I've been working on a simple express ordering form.
Homesome looks interesting, what are some gripes people have with them?
Nice job. How are you handling inventory management? Are the stores responsible for manually entering inventory?
That's one challenge right now -- most grocery stores have been run the same for years, so they have their regular order from their distributors and and just replenish when their shelves need stocking.
Nice concept, would you say this is a delivery service but for your local convenience store?
Thanks, yes the goal right now is to get as many local grocery stores on board. Many of the ones I've talked to already have delivery set up but have been using pdfs, email, and hand writing CC numbers to handle orders. I'm trying to provide a more structured and safe way to handle their online ordering. In the same vein as GrubHub as well, but free instead of taking 30% off the top.
Noob question (never used Instacart)....are they limited to only big grocery chains which is why there is an untapped market here?
Exactly. I think they're targeting big chains atm because it's guaranteed demand. Problem is there's probably a shop around the corner that can get you the same thing quicker.
But another reason for it is that bigger chains have a website/API you can integrate to see inventory while every mom and pop store has a different system (if at all). SO the challenge is how do you build something that can be somewhat standardized.
Exactly my point bro. Why would I order 1 thing from instacart when the same-thing can be available on the corner store. Amazing initiative. Amazing initiative man I had an exact same idea for small groceries and convenient stores. I would love to work on this with you. I am senior from Northeastern Illinois University.