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** Back To The Future For Online Grocers

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** Back To The Future For Online Grocers

While Webvan delivers, GroceryStreet.com minds the store.

The startup is taking a retro approach to Internet-age grocery shopping: You order online, and somebody will bag it but--gasp!-- you have to pick it up yourself. How quaint! No branded delivery trucks, no warehouses the size of football fields, no complex logistics procedures, but actual stores and life-size shopping carts, used the same way your mother always did.

GroceryStreet, which launched two weeks ago, exists only as an online window for supermarkets reaching out to customers. Employees pick the items and bag them. There's a $35 minimum order, and the $5 service fee is waived for total purchases over $75.

President and founder Francie Black insists that "I am not anti- delivery" and wishes Webvan success. But, she says, "The economics for them are completely different than the economics required to make GroceryStreet profitable. They've got to be delivering to your house and everybody else on your street."

The company, running on an initial financing round of $1 million, generates revenue from monthly subscription fees of a few thousand dollars charged to retailers based on total items listed and the number of stores.

Also, because GroceryStreet doesn't stock merchandise, it can offer more than 18,000 items to users, as opposed to the limited number the now-defunct Priceline WebHouse carried. - Christopher T. Heun

Updated: Thursday, September 6, 2007.