ce that could be bought at the same price as a supermarket without the long queues and crowds.  “Send is redefining the way an entire generation shops for groceries and daily essentials, making it possible to get the things you need delivered in under 15 minutes. We’re super excited to begin servicing pretty much all the suburbs in and around Sydney and Melbourne CBD,” Adams said.  As a vertically integrated platform, Send owns every level of the customer experience from the warehouses, or Send Shops as they are known, to the inventory and delivery.  Adams is aiming to establish 30 locations by the turn of the new year, starting with densely populated markets before looking into expanding beyond metropolitan areas. Send shops  Send’s online delivery hubs, known as ‘Send Shops’, are designed for picking and packing efficiency and are not open to the general public. “This allows us to provide an experience that can’t be compared with third-party delivery service,” Adams said.   The first Send Shops will be located in Potts Point, Alexandria and Camperdown in Sydney and Southbank, Melbourne. “When we think about the user experience, we want it to feel as close as possible to reaching into a fridge or pantry that is always stocked with everything you could possibly need,” Adams said.  Send offers most of the items found in a conventional supermarket, from fresh fruit and veg, to daily essentials and pet food, working with large distributors for its core offering of convenience and FMCG products. It is also planning to work closely with local vendors and provodores to access fresh produce.  “This allows us to offer local products from neighbourhood gems that you simply won’t find at larger supermarkets, whilst also ensuring the freshest and highest quality produce, replenishing stock quickly and supporting local economies,” he said.  15-minute delivery  Due to its tight time guarantee, Send only services an area of around 2km from its ‘shops’ and uses e-bikes for delivery in most instances to dodge traffic. During peak times Send ensures it has more drivers on hand.  Picking/packing is included as part of the 15 minute wait time which Adams said can be done in “under ~2 mins”. Send doesn’t cap orders to achieve this tight turnaround either. But with today’s consumers opting to shop more frequently rather than in one go, Adams doesn’t foresee many large orders being a big issue. “You could do a full weekly shop on the app if you wanted to. That being said, Send makes it so that it is no longer necessary to plan ahead for a weekly shop. You just buy what you need when it comes to mind, removing the element of planning ahead,” he said. While food delivery platforms like UberEats or Deliveroo have continued to thrive during the pandemic, Adams wanted to be competitive on price and speed, and so has hired his own team of drivers.  As opposed to working with commission-based, third party riders, our riders earn an hourly wage and work with us directly. This means riders are compensated fairly regardless of demand and we can offer a consistently high level of service to our customers,” he said. “Third-party delivery services charge vendors upwards of 30 per cent per transaction. This means that vendors often have to apply a markup on their products in order to capture any of the value as part of the sale. This is a lose-lose situation for the vendor and customer alike. We don’t have this problem because we purchase wholesale and sell at retail prices.”