Top contenders turned out to be Seattle, San Francisco and Boston, with the Puget Sound region getting the nod. Prices are kept low through reduced handling and the lower costs of warehouse real estate. Currently, the service is offered in an area around Seattle and Bellevue. But company officials plan to build gradually by adding delivery routes to neighborhoods with the strongest demand in Seattle, the Eastside and Snohomish County. Most likely this would encompass about 20 zip codes.
Executives expect to continue expanding at an ever higher rate for the foreseeable future.
They plan to make each market profitable within two to three years, but expect the company to stay in the red for five to six years yet. Drayton's experiment has caught the attention of major money players. In short, no one really has any idea. Drayton's investment war chest has bought, among other things, the company's fleet of 25 trucks, and a Bellevue operation which looks much like a warehouse grocery store. Employees run the aisles of food, filling customer orders and then loading them onto the waiting trucks for delivery.