Online Grocery Startup Uses AI To Skip Physical Stores And Crack Delivery Code

A Bay Area startup is taking on one of the biggest barriers to e-commerce's takeover of grocery shopping.

The startup, called Farmstead, delivers groceries to its online subscribers by sourcing produce from farms and storing them in its own "micro-warehouse," rather than picking from store aisles like Amazon Prime Now does with Whole Foods, or more established apps like Instacart do with participating grocers.

The biggest challenge facing grocery delivery is the perishable nature of produce, necessitating close proximity and agile transportation. Stocking too many of one item results in potentially massive spoilage, an issue that has long plagued traditional grocery stores. Founder and CEO Pradeep Elankumaran claims that Farmstead can use artificial intelligence to predict what produce customers want "better than any other supermarket ever can," as he told Street Fight.