Opinion: Why Are Grocery Startups Doing Better Than Food Delivery Startups?

We’ve already talked a lot about startups rising and falling and collapsing under the weight of expectations from customers and from within the company itself. There are so many reasons why food delivery startups don’t succeed and the list is long and tiresome, but that doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t true. It ranges from being not complete prepared to handle the pressures of the job, not having the funds and not raising any capital from venture capitals, not having enough employees to run the business and not putting enough into making it happen. It’s not just about food delivery startup problems, though, every startup feels this pinch at some point or the other. Some push through it, some don’t and collapse.

While food delivery startups aren’t having the best year, grocery startups are doing pretty well for themselves. They’re popping up everywhere, providing the best service a person could ask for. You get to pick and choose your vegetables, other groceries and even meat and fish online and have someone deliver it straight to your front door.

What are the grocery startups?

As you would imagine them to be, they are online grocery stores that don’t require you to leave the comfort of your home. You can either order using the mobile app or via the website, and pick and choose from different brands and quantities and find the best prices and offers, and then even be able to choose when you want them to deliver the order to your home or office. It’s a new age way of shopping. Much like we’ve been buying clothes and electronics online, you can now buy your groceries through the internet. And more often than not, your options are wider and limitless and you get to choose between more brands than you would in a store.

Why are they working so well?

Grocery shopping is one of the many important things that people do on a daily basis. Whether it’s in the morning when you walk down the street to buy vegetables for the day or pick up your daily or weekly groceries after a long day of work, it is an important process in the day. But the benefit of having an online grocery service is that you don’t have to spend an hour at the end of the day shopping and carrying the bags home. While you’re still at work, you can start shopping online and then have them deliver the products to your house or apartment either at a time you set or right away so that someone else can pick it up. For people who don’t drive themselves to work and use public transport for ease, shopping after work is just not comfortable.

Why are they doing better?

For one, everybody needs groceries. Everybody needs milk or bread or vegetables to cook food, oil or toothpaste almost every day. These are important requirements and you can’t ignore the need and say that you’ll buy it tomorrow after work. Food delivery can be pushed to a later stage when you’re too lazy to cook or don’t want to go out and eat a meal or whatever it is. Plus, it’s so rare that you can get good quality products at any time of the day at a good price and when you do get it you can’t help but celebrate your good fortune. Most of these grocery services also have their own delivery system, which means that they’re not paying someone else to deliver your shopping to you. A lot of restaurants are facing this problem where they’re paying 20% to the delivery service just to get the food to the customer, which is a lot of money even if you’re running a restaurant that makes twice as much on a daily basis.

In this year alone, Jugnoo has launched their grocery service, Lawrencedale Agro Foods raised funding, Freshboxx raised a round of angel funding, agritech startup DayBox got a fresh infusion of funds and even Amazon is looking to start introducing physical grocery stores in America and then start them around the world as well. Running a grocery store can be tiring and expensive, but given the growing market, it looks like it’s only going to get much bigger.