I remembered this story as a fake. Now I researched a bit and found out that this video really was just an advert concept, but later they made it real.
Fast, asynchronous delivery is part of the puzzle. Waiting around for amazon deliveries is a pain; but for low-value groceries, the risk of theft isn't as serious. It works OK for newspaper deliveries, and when I was a kid we had milk deliveries left outside the door with no problems (yes, horse-drawn).
This service would be even more awesome with self driving vans optimizing logistics. Now to solve the delivery from van to door problem - as usual the last 1% takes as much effort as the previous 99%.
That's an interesting idea. I'm coding Direct Store Delivery software that manages inventory through wireless handheld devices. The problem is that a lot of shipping is from vendor to store directly and the receivers are required to validate the shipment has the correct products, quantity, cost/deal invoice details and then work it out with the vendor delivery driver as needed. There are companies that strategically attempt to offload certain products that the store doesn't want at that point in time but will save the vendor $ if they can ship today vs. next week when different cost/deals take effect.
That is awesome. Does anyone know if Peapod, Fresh Direct, or any other US based grocery delivery service has a API? I want to try something like this.
