- The New York Times reports this morning on the success of e-tailer FreshDirect.com, which, it says, “which is transforming the way a growing number of New Yorkers get their food.
“After two years and two million deliveries (and $600,000 in parking tickets), FreshDirect has become the online grocery service that many New Yorkers have embraced, even while its ubiquitous trucks, piles of discarded boxes and high prices have irritated others. In 2004 FreshDirect had $100 million in sales, almost double the sales of the year before. Also last year, the number of New Yorkers who told the Zagat Survey that they had ordered groceries online rose to 52 percent from 16 percent.”
The NYT notes that FreshDirect has survived “by aggressively catering to the kind of New Yorkers who would fill out a Zagat survey. And its plans are to continue going after this customer base – this summer, it will begin delivering to the Hamptons, the upscale (and off-the-charts) communities on the eastern tip of Long Island.
- KC's View:
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It’s a good piece by the Times, but it does read like a bit of a love letter. Not to cast aspersions on the paper’s motivations – because after almost three decades as a writer, we know how these things work – but we suspect that there are a bunch of NYT writes and editors who have fallen in love with FreshDirect.
