36 THE QUEENS COURIER • OCTOBER 28, 2021 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
“Uprooted” event studio promotes JOKR’s new beer delivery. A Gorillas courier leaves the warehouse in Chinatown to deliver groceries.
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN AND
GABRIELE HOLTERMANN
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
Th is is the second story in Schneps
Media’s fi ve-part series examining the proliferation
of grocery delivery services across
the city — and the impact they’re having
on residents and brick-and-mortar business
owners alike.
New quick-commerce grocery delivery
apps promise to get you what you need
within 15 minutes of placing your order
— whether it’s a full cart of groceries or
just the carton of eggs you need to bake
brownies.
But the speed of delivery isn’t the only
draw — it’s the cost.
Startups like Gorillas, Fridge No More,
1520 and JOKR advertise free delivery or
low delivery charges, and no minimum
order price.
On their website, Fridge No More
declares “No extra cost for convenience.
How are prices so good? Smaller stores
= lower rent.” JOKR says their prices are
about the same as what you’d fi nd in the
local grocery store.
Each of these deliver from a series of
small, neighborhood-based “dark stores,”
micro-warehouses not open to the public.
A smaller store, as Fridge No More says,
means lower rent.
“We have less overhead in a small store
than a traditional shopping center, and
we’re able to have more control over our
inventory and our waste cost,” said Tyler
Trerotola, U.S. co-founder of JOKR.
“Which we can channel back to the consumer
through better pricing.”
Unlike grocery services like InstaCart,
where personal shoppers are sent to existing
grocery stores, these companies buy
their stock directly from suppliers —
there is no middle man.
“Because we own our inventory, we
can procure from both your large CPGs
(consumer packaged goods) of the world
all the way down to your mom and pop
shops, and have all of that in the same
store for delivery. So we make more margin
on all of that,” Trerotola said.
Th e companies also keep track of what
sells and what doesn’t in each warehouse,
allowing them to tailor the number of
items they order and store – something
else that can keep costs down, as they
aren’t ordering miscellaneous items that
need to be thrown away.
Making a grocery run
Our reporters placed grocery orders
from some of the city’s most popular apps
– or tried to – to see how prices on dayto
day necessities like eggs, milk, and
toilet paper compared to the costs of the
same or similar foods on diff erent apps.
Besides promising to deliver your groceries
within 15 minutes, “Fridge No
More” also off ers 50% off the fi rst order.
However, the promo code “50Less” had
expired. Aft er contacting customer service
via their app — they responded
within one minute with a quite cheerful
sounding message — the rep provided a
new promo code, which worked.
Th e app doesn’t provide the option of
sorting their products from lowest to
highest priced, so frugal customers have
to scroll through the app to fi nd products
that meet their budget. If you expect
to fi nd “no-name” brands to save an extra
buck, you’re out of luck. While “Fridge
No More” off ers brands that can be found
in any supermarket like Pepperidge Farm
and Charmin, many of their products are
more “high-end.”
Aft er adding a four-count of “Seventh
Generation” toilet paper at $5.29, 10 oz of
ground Cafe Bustelo Espresso at $4.19, a
dozen large eggs at $3.19, a loaf of white
Italian bread at $2.89, a 20 oz bottle of
Gatorade at $1,89, Silk Almond Milk
for $4.49, and a pint of “Halo Top Ice
Cream,” sea salt caramel fl avor at $5.29,
and one of America’s favorite drinks,
Coca Cola, which only comes in cans
and small glass bottles — checkout was
pretty easy.
The Race to Deliver
Are the new grocery delivery apps
Photos by Gabriele Holtermann
A Gorillas courier maneuvers through traffi c as she is leaving the warehouse in Chinatown to deliver groceries.
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