How to Start a Grocery Delivery Business

Everyone needs to eat, but not everyone likes to shop. In a world where the time crunch is constantly crunching harder, plenty of people happily pay to have someone else get their groceries. Like when starting any business, you'll need to do market research, advertise and research local business-licensing laws. But if you have a reliable vehicle and the time to drive, the service can be a money-maker.

Consider Your Options

There's more than one way to set up a grocery delivery business:

  • Contract with a local store to deliver customer orders for a fee. The grocery bills the customer and markets the service, and you do the work.
  • Establish an account with a grocery wholesaler. Your customers give you their orders, you place them and then sell your service at a profit.
  • Customers contact you with their shopping list, and you go to the store for them. 
  • Sign up with an established company such as WeGoShop. 
  • Deliver restaurant meals for eateries that don't want their own drivers on staff. 
  • Deliver meal kits with ingredients pre-measured for specific meals.
  • Cater to specific market segments

    for example, offering services to seniors in senior housing or assisted living. * Sign up with a driving service such as Lyft or Uber that also offers delivery-driver gigs.

Consider your needs before you choose your path. Reselling wholesale groceries is usually more profitable than contracting with local supermarkets, for instance. However, it also requires doing the marketing yourself and deciding what groceries you'll carry. Working with a supermarket takes a lot of the marketing burden off your shoulders.

Tech and Food

If you're in business for yourself, you need some way for customers to tell you what they want and when they want it. If you're just starting out, taking text or email requests from your customers may be enough to get the job done. As you grow, you may find it more effective to set up a website for customers to make orders from. That's important if you're buying wholesale to resell or delivering meal kits. However if you're targeting the senior market, keep in mind many of your customers may not use a computer or smartphone.

Know Your Competition

Before launching your grocery delivery business, look around and see what the competition is like. Are there existing services locally, such as Instacart? If so, how can you carve out your own market niche? For instance, if your rivals deliver grocery foods and you're willing to hit the weekend farmers' market, that might help your company stand out.

Making Deliveries

Driving down to the store to get one item isn't likely to be profitable. Some grocery delivery services set a minimum amount per delivery – $35, say – and work on a schedule, such as weekly or twice weekly delivery. More flexibility may give you a competitive edge, as long as you can keep it profitable. You can also see the rates other companies offer on their websites and undercut them.

Another factor to consider is the actual drive. To deliver hot or frozen food promptly, you'll need a car in good condition and big coolers. You may have to work around traffic or road construction. Even with relying on your phone's maps, it's going to take planning and experience. One DoorDash executive said that work on the automated delivery system takes up 90 percent of the company's time.