JackBe, which claims to be the country’s first curbside drive-thru grocer, opened its first location this week in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, according to a release sent to The Spoon. The store will allow customers to place orders via the JackBe app and pick up their groceries at a drive-thru bay, where a JackBe employee will deliver the groceries right to their car.
The new 17,000-square-foot location carries in-demand products across a number of categories, including produce, meat, bakery, deli, and consumables. JackBe is also planning to roll out prepared meals and local brands in the future.
While JackBe claims to be the first drive-thru grocery, another startup named Opie actually beat them to it when it launched its first location in South Caroline in 2021. To be fair to JackBe, at three thousand square feet, Opie’s is something more akin to a drive-thru convenience store than a grocery store. Before Opie, Amazon opened a drive-thru pickup location in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle for customers who ordered groceries through its website. Interestingly, Amazon announced this week they are closing that location (the e-commerce giant only has one other drive-thru location).
According to Supermarket News, JackBe closed a $3.5 million seed round in April of last year and plans to raise an additional $3.5 million in pre-Series A funding to fund the building of two more stores in the Oklahoma City area in early 2023.
