On-line shopping

February 15, 2009 - 9:40 PM by

online_groceryI’ve been a catalog orderer for some time now, years, really. I got started with the J. Peterman catalog, yes, of Seinfeld fame, and from there moved on to a host of clothing catalogs, eventually doing much of my shopping on-line and continuing to do so once I moved to Israel (You just have to know people who travel back and forth between Israel and the U.S.). But food orders had eluded me. That was partially because there were no Internet food shopping purveyors in Israel, no Fresh Direct types in the land of high-tech. But that was before City Direct.

City Direct is an on-line shopping system created by Omer Eilam, an Israeli serial entrepreneur who began his online shopping empire in Jerusalem, and is planning on extending it to Tel Aviv, and then, New York. It’s been in existence for two years, but I only availed myself of it last week, thinking that our new family order required some additional scaling and efficiency on the errands front.

What’s great about City Direct is that you can order from one of my favorite supermarkets (SuperDeal, in our case, a very customer-friendly, local chain where they even bag your groceries for you, very un-Israeli), as well as fruits and vegetables and cheeses from Mahane Yehuda, coffee from the Coffee Mill, ice cream from Aldo, breads from Lehem Erez and other bakeries, office supplies from Office Depot and several other select stores. Once you create a master list, you can keep working from it, adding or subtracting whatever you need, and then choosing the day and time slot that you want everything delivered. It costs just NIS 16 for the service, and Eilam makes his profit by receiving a percentage from the suppliers.

He has 300 customers so far, primarily Anglo Saxons who he believed would ‘get’ this service, love the idea that they could order from their favorite stores, and then recommend it to their friends. In fact, he’s only working by word of mouth so far, with seven staffers who help him run the system, including one person who actually heads to the selected stalls at the shuk to buy the customers’ fruits and veggies. Eventually, he wants to include every kind of service possible, allowing customers to order their movie tickets, restaurant reservations, laundry, music stores — “what you want, from wherever you want it,” says Eilam, who plans on taking this model and using it as a platform between all kinds of purveyors and customers.

I love the concept, given the fact that like many people, I spend so much time online, and this allows me to avoid doing some of the more annoying errands out there. My husband, however, points out that it takes away from the often satisfying food shopping experience. He’s the one in our family who does much of the food shopping; I’m a shopper, but not a lover of food shopping. Too much schlepping. And aside from the fact that my groceries came 45 minutes late, what’s not to like about an Israeli company that calls to find out how you liked the service? And they say Israel isn’t a service-oriented country.

Tags: , , , , , • Category: A New Reality, Business, Food, Israeliness, Technology 

Comments

3 Comments on On-line shopping

  1. Kate on Wed, Feb 18th 2009 7:59 AM

    2. So, I looked at that City Direct website just out of curiousity, since I’m in the US, and the fine print says its primary business location is in Mountain View, California. I’m trying to figure out how that makes sense. Why would an Israeli grocery and other goods service be based in California?

  2. jessica on Wed, Feb 18th 2009 9:13 PM

    3. probably bc omer has a company based in CA, and he uses that address for city direct and other businesses that he owns or has owned.

  3. natalie on Thu, Jul 22nd 2010 7:15 PM

    4. Yay, finally this exists in Israel.

    So who makes the deliveries, citydirect, or the supermarket?

    If we’re buying from more than 1 store (and there are at least 10 on the website to choose from, ranging from bakery, office supplies, supermarket, etc), will we get all the items in one delivery, or will they be sporadically delivered throughout the day?

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