For less than you would pay at the store, INTERNET SERVICES bring media and munchies right to your door.
THE REAL FIGHT in New York this year has nothing to do with the Senate contest between Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. It's the battle between two Manhattan companies--Urbanfetch.com and Kozmo.com--for supremacy in a business that barely existed a year ago: whizzing Web-ordered food and entertainment to customers in an hour or less.
But then New Yorkers expect, and usually get, just about any sort of consumable delivered to their door. What makes Kozmo.com and Urbanfetch.com novel is their use of the Internet to deliver faster and better than anybody else. All you do is fill out a short account form, add goods to a shopping cart, check out with a credit card (sorry, no cash on delivery), and the goodies appear on your doorstep.
With the help of our far-flung associates (who literally worked for food), Online Shopper put Kozmo.com through its paces in the five cities it serves: Boston, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. If you don't live in one of those places, sit tight, because Kozmo.com plans to incorporate at least 20 more cities this year, starting with Los Angeles (Chicago and Atlanta are next). Urbanfetch, which we tested for comparison, serves only New York but is considering expansion here and abroad.
A Web weekend. Here is what Kozmo can slide on to your doorstep in less than one hour: books and CDs, DVDs and videos for rent or sale, video games and magazines--plus drugstore items and the snacks needed to experience all this entertainment properly. Kozmo will also sell you a Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 or Sony PlayStation player, and Urbanfetch has a full electronics store for those who need a Palm Pilot on their threshold in a New York hour.
The edibles vary by city, but nowhere could Online Shopper spin a proper meal from Kozmo's menu--flatbread sandwiches in New York and refrigerated pizza in San Francisco are as close as it gets. Urbanfetch has a few offerings at the other extreme of the scale, including a lobster dinner for two. Both services mercilessly target the instinct toward sugary indulgence with candy, cookies, sodas and more flavors of Ben & Jerry's ice cream than anyone should be familiar with. Kozmo makes concessions to local tastes, such as fresh coffee beans and gourmet salsa in Seattle, but local online delivery at this stage is more like a convenience store than a supermarket.
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