Grocery delivery makes a lot of sense in a lot of places (it's been going on in NYC forever).
What didn't make sense was massive capital investment to build their own distribution centers (billions) and expanding into markets where everyone who could afford non-food-stamp food had cars (Atlanta, Texas).
I loved WebVan in the bay area. In the Bay, the capital-intensive model was fine, although they could have bootstrapped by having kids run into Safeway stores as customers, which is what Instacart, Tesco, Safeway Delivery, etc. do now.
What didn't make sense was massive capital investment to build their own distribution centers (billions) and expanding into markets where everyone who could afford non-food-stamp food had cars (Atlanta, Texas).
I loved WebVan in the bay area. In the Bay, the capital-intensive model was fine, although they could have bootstrapped by having kids run into Safeway stores as customers, which is what Instacart, Tesco, Safeway Delivery, etc. do now.