When Same-Day Delivery Is Too Slow

Gopuffis trying to outrace its competitors in the “dark convenience store” business

- Lizette Chapman

To customers dropping in for a quick bottle of pinot grigio, the BevMo! on Junipero Serra Boulevard in Colma, a few miles from San Francisco State University’s campus, looks like one of the chain’s standard outlets—same red signage, same rows of bottled booze. But tucked away in a 2,000-square-foot storage room outside of public view is a new addition, a so-called dark convenience store stocked with items appealing to the most urgent needs of the surrounding population. There are sex pillows, vibrators, whips, and emergency contraception, along with fake eyelashes, frozen food, and printer paper. Couriers wait in parked cars outside, ready to spring into action in case a customer has a sudden need to prepare for an intimate encounter or a day of working from home.

The back room is the work of Gopuff, a Philadelphia-based delivery startup that’s raised $3.4 billion from investors including SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund at valuations as high as $15 billion. The startup aims to provide customers with a wider and more eclectic range of products than they’d find in a convenience store, delivered to their home within a half-hour of placing an order through an app. It bought BevMo for $350 million late last year to gain a foothold in California.