Interested in a brand-new way to help those last remaining mom-and-pop shops? Order from a same-day delivery service that has a chance at a worldwide Amazon.com takeover.
Luckily for locals, there are many options as Boston becomes Ground Zero for the on-demand delivery wars. In just the past two weeks, a new app called Postmates and another dubbed Favor have expanded to the Hub, promising to deliver whatever you want from wherever you want it — all in under an hour.
Beloved by Austin residents, Favor is focusing on the Boston University and Northeastern University areas. Its "runners" can be spotted wearing blue tuxedo T-shirts and driving cars adorned with giant bow ties.
Days after Favor debuted in Boston, the new Postmates app expanded to Boston and Cambridge. San Francisco-based Postmates — which launched with $1.2 million in seed money and 12 employees two years ago — is much larger than Favor, and it became a serious hit when investors realized the average user generated $116 in revenues per month, paving the way for $23 million in angel and venture capital funding from some of the most established VC firms in Silicon Valley.
Such support has allowed Postmates to expand to cities including Seattle, New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles. Clearly hoping to lock down entire cities before Amazon fully scales its same-day delivery services, Postmates is waiving its $5 delivery fee in Boston until July 20.
Postmates and Favor join an increasingly crowded battle to become a local version of FedEx. Instacart already offers same-day grocery delivery. A good chunk of the Boston region can receive on-demand booze deliveries via an app called Drizly. (Another notable, though far-flung, contender is Zookal, which is trying to beat Amazon to the punch with same-day delivery of textbooks via unmanned drones — unfortunately not here, but in Australia.) Much like Uber — which has also dipped its toe in the courier pool — these apps charge credit cards in the background and buyers need not worry about tips, which are included in a frictionless process that consumers universally dig.
You probably know that Amazon aims to own the mean streets of same-day delivery. The big difference between Amazon and the apps I've mentioned is that Amazon has its own warehouses filled with goods. It isn't going to pick up the dinner ingredients you forgot from your local grocer. It's going to BE your local grocer. And I don't know about you, but I'm not too keen on that idea.
Consumers now want what they want, when they want it. Convenience stores are seen as inconvenient. And mom-and pop shops are the David to Amazon's Goliath. So give Amazon a run for its money: Download a same-day delivery app, and consider whether a $5 delivery fee might be worth making it a little harder for the worldwide retail market to be fully owned and operated by one corporation.
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