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By Nancy Dahlberg / ndahlberg@miamiherald.com
Time. This just might be one of the season’s most precious gifts of all.
You don’t want to spend what few spare minutes you have standing in line, do you? That is exactly what South Florida’s burgeoning network of “on-demand” delivery services are banking on.
The holiday season brings a surge of consumer business to these new services, which deliver transportation, groceries, packages, restaurant meals, last-minute gifts and that pie you forgot to make for the office party. Many of these capitalize on the so-called sharing economy, where a network of contract workers often use their own vehicles and spare time to deliver whatever your heart desires.
All of the new services are app-enabled, aggregating demand on mobile devices but fulfilling that demand through offline services, giving the consumer or small business one less chore to do when time is at a premium.
Coming on the heels of Uber and Lyft launching their ride-hailing services in 2014, this year brought a flood of new options to South Florida shores — including the expansion of fast-growing companies such as Instacart for groceries, Caviar for restaurant food, Shyp for packages and Postmates for, well, just about anything, including the wrapping paper you just ran out of. Need a drink and need it now? Klink, Minibar or Thirstie will deliver the party to you. One of the most recent on-demand entries in Miami is Amazon Prime Now’s two-hour delivery service.
As they ramp up in South Florida and try to gain mainstream adoption, many of these services hope to entice holiday-frenzied consumers to give them a try.