Google Shopping Express expands old formula: Take orders, deliver stuff (mostly)

We at Ars are blessed with being able to work from just about anywhere. Most of us work at home, most of the time. So it was fortuitous today that I was working from San Jose, California, when I caught wind of the fact that Google had just debuted to the general public Google Shopping Express (GSE), its new same-day grocery delivery service, to more parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose. (Google also launched iOS and Android apps for GSE, too.)

Google began a test version of this service in March 2013, but now it will expand to the general public from San Francisco to San Jose, and it’s free for the first six months. As an Oakland resident, I’m generally out of luck for home delivery for the time being.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Google wrote that it would be partnering with a number of national and local retailers, including Staples, Target, Walgreens, American Eagle, REI, Guitar Center, Whole Foods Market, and local source of high-end caffeine, Blue Bottle Coffee. (Though, you have to actually be in San Francisco to have Blue Bottle’s beans delivered—they wouldn’t deliver them to me down in San Jose.)

Google Shopping Express’ home page.

The last time I used an online grocery delivery service was when I lived in New York (from 2004-2005) and took advantage of FreshDirect to have very specific things that I wanted delivered—and save myself the hassle of dragging those things across town and up to my apartment. I’m also old enough to have used Kozmo.com when it debuted in Los Angeles in the late 1990s. Both services sure were convenient, but one problem with online shopping is that it often requires knowing exactly what you want. Like most other kinds of online shopping, I find that there’s often less chance of serendipity, of finding a product that you didn’t know you wanted. (The fact that my local Trader Joe’s puts its bourbon selection near the checkout line is very tempting!)

Still, I like the idea of online shopping. Sure, I love biking down to the weekly farmer’s market, but remembering to block out time to go shop for something sometimes means that the purchase ends up getting delayed. If I could place an order overnight, or early in the morning, and get it delivered that same day, that could be a pretty nice convenience.

When I took GSE for a spin, it was fairly straightforward, combining a known Google interface with shopping. The search made it simple to query products across different retailers and narrow the search to one retailer. GSE largely abstracts away which retailer you’re buying from—if you want to buy from three retailers in a single order (as I did), it’s pretty easy to do.

The polo-shirted, hybrid-driving fleet

A quick glance through the various products available seemed to suggest that (at least for now) Google is limited to non-perishable (canned or packaged) goods. A search for “tomatoes” turned up a “Yes to Tomatoes Skin Clearing Facial Mask,” as well as canned tomatoes and tomato paste. And Google seems to limit its beverage offerings to non-alcoholic stuff: a search for “beer” turned up only root beer. But there were many things that I could imagine some shoppers might anticipate that they’d need within hours—tampons or condoms, for example.

After I finished selecting my basket of goods—my wife reminded me that she needed Blistex and Tic Tacs—I checked out. Then, I selected a 1-5pm window for today, as I’d already missed the morning delivery window, and lo, $27.56 later, my order was in the queue. I placed the order at 10:58am local time. Payment was easy, because Google already has my payment information through Google Wallet.

Google Shopping Express’ checkout screen.

One of my biggest questions was whether an order from three separate retailers would be delivered separately or together. When the first part of my order—a two pound bag of flour, a bottle of ranch dressing, and a four-pack of root beer—showed up first, I had my answer. That order, fulfilled by supermarket chain Nob Hill Foods, took just 25 minutes between when the order screen showed “In Transit” to when a delivery man named Laron, dressed in khaki pants and a blue polo shirt, showed up to the San Jose café where I’d been working all day.

I flagged Laron down as he entered the café. Despite Wednesday’s debut, Laron said that today wasn’t very busy, and that he has been doing deliveries between San Jose and San Francisco. He walked back to his car straightaway, tapping at his phone constantly, likely marking that he’d made a delivery and trying to figure out where to go next. Laron’s ride was a white Toyota Prius C hatchback, with “Google Shopping Express” painted on the side (sadly, the car was not a Google self-driving robot car). I noticed that both the car and Laron’s nametag said that the delivery fleet was “Operated by 1-800Courier,” a longstanding delivery service.

Laron, my first delivery man.

Credit: Cyrus Farivar

The second delivery, which came with two delivery people dressed in green polos, arrived about an hour later. Jennifer, the car’s driver, told me that they had done about 10 deliveries in the South Bay over the course of two hours. She also told me that the drivers did not know the contents of what they were delivering—each bag comes with a sealed delivery label across the top.

The third delivery and the smallest—just two different types of Blistex, ordered from Walgreens—was the one that actually had a bit of a hiccup. While waiting for someone to actually show up to the café where I’d been working, I got an e-mail saying that my goods had been delivered. I knew that couldn’t possibly have been true, as I could see all the cars that pulled up in front of the café. (The other two delivery people had parked directly in front of the café and walked right in with the package.) Twice, I stepped outside the café to see if the delivery person had sneakily (or lazily) left it by the front door. Nothing.

As soon as I noticed this discrepancy, I e-mailed and tweeted at Google and received a reply via both methods within 10 minutes, telling me the company would look into it. After nearly an hour, a representative offered me a refund or a reorder “to avoid any further delay,” but he did not offer any explanation as to how this happened. I ended up re-ordering the two Blistex products for my wife and having them sent to her San Francisco office to be delivered on Thursday morning.

But why the error?

“We’re still investigating with our shipping team,” the nameless person manning the @GoogleShopEx Twitter account on Wednesday told me.

The future of shopping

So the bottom line is, would I order from Google again? The short answer is probably, yes, if I could. My Wednesday episode in Google Shopping Express was essentially a one-off for now. After all, Google doesn’t yet actually deliver to my front door in Oakland, but Amazon Prime does.