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> I can't wait for a grocery chain (local, national, Amazon, I don't care) to carry a full store's worth of food and let me decide when I want it.

In some areas (I'm in the San Francisco area) Safeway will deliver. http://shop.safeway.com/

However, I looked into it for my aging parents in Oregon and Safeway did not "officially" do deliveries there, but the checkout clerk I was talked with said she shopped and delivered for several older people in town. If Safeway won't deliver in your area you might setup something informal with a Safeway checkout clerk?

Safeway.com offers that. They will also deliver.

WebVan is the most famous. As I see it, home grocery delivery is an infrastructure problem. WebVan failed by expanding rapidly in multiple markets, before they had the cash flow to really support even one market. Furthermore, the infrastructure they built was not really what they needed (which is why they should have started in one market and expanded.......make the mistakes at a small scale, then you know what to avoid when you scale up).

Now there are plenty of companies doing it. I know one person who does all their shopping this way. I had the impression Google was already doing this is in some markets.

"abolitionist vegan" = suicide for plants?

Perhaps they smuggle carrots via the Underground Safeway

Yeah webvan. I thought it was stupid. It folded. YET, Safeway delivers.

I saw webvan trucks in the wild. I even had a roommate a few years ago have groceries delivered from Safeway.

Has the kozmo.com domain come up for renewal yet?

Venture capitalism is extremely high risk, so it stands to reason that a lot of the people willing to take such risks are dumb. And of course there are plenty of people who know about this dumbness, and exploit it. Pitch some ridiculous idea, run a few rounds of VC, build up a small business around it, take a HUGE salary, then either sell the company or abandon ship when the company fails.

But just in case you don't know:

http://www.giantfood.com/peapod/
http://shop.safeway.com/offers/swy/default6.asp?PRMX_GOOG_DELIVER_0703

It doesn't seem terribly unreasonable to me that a company in the mid 90s could start a site called meat.com and make deals with tons of local grocery stores to deliver meat/groceries.

I loved Webvan. My friends loved Webvan. To this day, I think it was one of the best ideas to come out of the dot-com era, even though it was one of the first companies to go under when the bubble burst.

Safeway / Vans are starting it up again.

http://shop.safeway.com/

This time there's a minimum order of $50, and a small
delivery charge for orders under $150. That solves a
big chunk of Webvan's business model problem.

still think that the idea is valid, and if it were done right, would be a multibillion-dollar industry. Whoever takes up the cause now, though, would have to fight [...] the trials and tribulations of starting a new business...

I liked the idea of WebVan, too, but never lived in a neighborhood they delivered to.

They list Webvan, which was actually a good idea. The problem was that they had 3% market share in 30 cities, and needed 30% market share in 3 cities to make the delivery costs work.

Safeway actually does that today, but in fewer markets.

Here is the privacy policy from the Safeway Club Card:

SAFEWAY CLUB CARD CUSTOMER
AGREEMENT STATEMENT
We respect your privacy. Safeway does not sell or lease personally identifying information (i.e., your name, address, telephone number, and bank and credit card account numbers) to non-affiliated companies or entities. We do record information regarding the purchases made with your Safeway Club Card to help us provide you with special offers and other information. Safeway also may use this information to provide you with personally tailored coupons, offers or other information that may be provided to Safeway by other companies.

http://www.safeway.com/ and http://www.albertsons.com/ offer home delievery in most of the areas they have stores. That would be Amazon's real competition along with other local grocery stores.

Two of the three closest grocery stores to my house are an Albertsons and a Safeway. (The other one is a QFC-- but they don't seem to do the online shopping thingy, ah well.)

Safeway may use this information to give you personally-tailored coupons, offers or other information

We reserve the right at our discretion to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this Statement at any time.

...both Safeway (might be IE-only) and Albertsons deliver groceries. Both charge a $9.95 delivery fee and deliver from local stores.

I must admit, though, that I'd rather see a startup company doing this than the already-established grocery stores. I was a happy Webvan customer, and I still think the model is quite viable. (Plus, I love the FreshDirect site design.) Here's hoping FreshDirect or a similar company takes a stab at this here in the Bay Area!

Companies already collect an insane amount of personal information and profile me to get inside my pocketbook. So the government is recording all of my online correspondence and/or activity? What's new? I don't see people complaining about everyday privacy intrusions, such as Safeway's club card.