Amazon isn't winner-takes-all

Amazon looks dominant mostly because it solved general online retail earlier and better, not because every online retail category naturally collapses to one winner. In ultrafast grocery, each neighborhood has its own mini supply chain, rider density, and product mix, which makes competition local. That creates room for several services to coexist, especially when they differ on speed, assortment, and whether they act like a supermarket, a convenience store, or a marketplace.

• Amazon and Instacart mainly trained customers to plan grocery orders ahead, pick a delivery window, and accept substitutions. Ultrafast changes the job to be done. A customer taps for milk, bananas, detergent, or a charger and gets it in 10 to 15 minutes from a nearby dark store. That is a different service pattern, not just a smaller version of Amazon.
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• The economics are neighborhood scale, not national scale. JOKR described building market by market at the neighborhood level, and the broader ultrafast model depends on small urban dark stores, tight delivery radiuses, and enough local order density to fill riders and inventory. That is why local share matters more than owning all online retail traffic.
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• The better comparison is not Amazon versus everyone, but bodegas, CVS, 7-Eleven, Gopuff, and other convenience driven services. These businesses can all survive with narrower assortments and distinct customer habits. In the same way, online retail can support multiple winners when each one owns a specific urgent use case and a specific basket of products.
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Going forward, the market is likely to split by use case. Broad catalog players like Amazon will keep owning planned ecommerce, while ultrafast and convenience focused operators win urgent, local purchases. The winners will be the companies that build dense neighborhood operations and a habit forming assortment, not the ones that simply try to be Amazon with faster bikes.