-Food and the Online Grocery Competition
When everybody’s busy, something’s got to give. The relatively new service industry of online groceries (that is, grocery shopping online with the home delivery of the purchased items) has grown to address today’s consumer demands of convenience and time savings. Perhaps the best known provider in the industry is Pea-pod.com, an operation that began outside Chicago. Since its founding in 1989, it has expanded to nearly a dozen metropolitan markets, serving over 100,000 households. Other competitors sense the market potential, and many firms share space in the marketplace, includinggroceronline.com (which uses UPS and Federal Express rather than local delivery operators); or netgrocer.com (which covers towns and rural areas, with no annual fee and makes available merchandise such as books and CDs); as well as many as yet local providers. Industry experts predict continued strong growth (though their numbers vary wildly; home food shopping is expected to grow to anywhere from $5 billion to $80 billion in the next three to five years).