FreshDirect on the LES: WTF?

Lockhart Steele is not much of a crusader, it would seem: he will fight for FreshDirect delivery on the Lower East Side only until they start delivering to him. Then, he'll just give up: his latest post completely fails to communicate the utterly illogical craziness of the new delivery area.

Let me illustrate, with the help of some extremely basic HTML, and using my own block (why not?) as an example. My street is a narrow one-way road: clearly, if FreshDirect can deliver to any of the buildings on any given block of Rivington Street, it should be able to deliver to all of them.

In fact, however, FreshDirect delivers to three of the buildings on the block: 106 Ridge, 206 Rivington, and 210 Rivington, all of which are walk-up tenements. It does not deliver to 203 Rivington, which is a nice deliveryman-friendly elevator building.

Ridge Street	106 Ridge: YES!	202: NO	206: YES!	210: YES!	83 Pitt: NO	Pitt Street
	Rivington Street
	203: NO

The situation gets even weirder when you realise that Rivington Street runs west, and Pitt Street runs north. In other words, in order to deliver to 206 Rivington and 210 Rivington, the only way that the FreshDirect trucks are going to be able to get there is by driving north up Pitt Street from Delancey. Yet none of the buildings on Pitt between Delancey and Rivington (like 65 Pitt and 67 Pitt) get delivery either. Meanwhile, all the buildings on Ridge Street get delivery.

I phoned up FreshDirect to ask about this on Saturday, and spoke to a friendly woman who agreed that it made no sense at all, and who said that she'd get a supervisor to look into it on Monday morning. But when I called back today, Tuesday afternoon, I got someone much less friendly, who simply said that the Marketing Department hadn't made the decision to deliver to my area yet.

I've been racking my brains to try and work out how you could possibly include 206 Rivington in your delivery area and yet exclude 202 Rivington, and have come up completely blank. If anybody has any bright ideas, do post them here. Meanwhile, FreshDirect people, if you're out there, do let me know what kind of person would single out individual buildings in this manner, refusing to deliver to them while happily delivering to their next-door neighbours. Don't you realise you're causing strife down here?

UPDATE: I eventually managed to speak to a very friendly chap called John in Marketing, and he told me that the official boundary on Rivington Street was Ridge. So how 206 and 210 Rivington got included no one knows. But he said he'd talk to somebody, and today I checked the website again... and FreshDirect now delivers to the whole block! Wahey!

Posted by Felix at 15:49 EST

Comments

Just make a fake sign that says 206a or something and plaster that over the old address.?

Posted by: foo Dee at 10:13 EST, February 25, 2004

Maybe we could just have them deliver across the street and wait outside for them to arrive.

Or maybe we could pay our neighbors in 206 or 210 a tip to accept our delivery.

Or maybe we could call Fresh Direct and annoy them into submission -

WE WANT OUR FRESH DIRECT!

Posted by: Michelle at 22:33 EST, February 25, 2004

XpressGrocer.com delivers 7 days a week with same day delivery to the entire island of Manahttan. They affer a far superior selections and has the same $50 worth of free groceries FreshDirect has. They are a much better compnay that has recently started business so therefore not as famous yet.

Posted by: Mike at 7:37 EST, April 27, 2004

Great site, well done. I enjoy beeing here and i�ll come back soon. You do a great job. Many greetings.

Posted by: Miky Joe at 3:45 EST, December 22, 2004

Fresh Direst is democratic get on the site and when it says it doesn't deliver to your area indicate an interest and tell the rest of your neighbors to do the same!
Enough requests they'll be there.

BTW Express Grocers is actually Gristedes (the store that got me to start ordering from Fresh Direct in the first place)
Scary & dirty! I'd be afraid to eat their produce, meats, etc!

Posted by: karen Brenner at 5:48 EST, March 11, 2006

Fresh Direct is democratic get on the site and when it says it doesn't deliver to your area indicate an interest and tell the rest of your neighbors to do the same!
Enough requests they'll be there.

BTW Express Grocers is actually Gristedes (the store that got me to start ordering from Fresh Direct in the first place)
Scary & dirty! I'd be afraid to eat their produce, meats, etc!

Posted by: Karen Brenner at 5:48 EST, March 11, 2006