Forget 1-Day Delivery -- Gimme in 1 Hour

An ex-Amazon supply chain engineer has recently proposed "Instacart" - a one-hour delivery solution for consumers who just can't wait a full day.  Still in its early stages, Instacart is only live in select parts of California between the hours of 9am and 10pm.  But ultimately, the company promises to be of Amazon caliber - offering a marketplace with food, alcohol and toiletries, all delivered to your home in an hour.

In order to make good on this business proposal, Instacart has hired a fleet of delivery men, who will pick up items from local stores (which is where inventory will be sourced) and deliver it within the hour for a premium fee and within 3 hours for a lesser fee.  As of now, the range of available products are based on store proximity, but eventually, consumers will be able to choose by brand and other desirable product traits.

Given the success of Fresh Direct and SeamlessWeb, this seems like a no-brainer of a good idea.  The trend toward ordering from one's computer is so large, it seems trivial to even label it as a trend. If Instacart can successfully deliver (no pun intended) what they promise, there will be very little reason to ever leave our apartments and go to the store.  The combination of instant gratification and zero effort seems too good to be true (or a sign of the apocalypse), but will no doubt garner mass users once it's up and running.  The question then becomes whether brick and mortar grocery stores will move in the direction of print media, which is to say mostly online with semblances of their traditional form peppered in various places for good measure.