Just a few years ago, the concept of having groceries delivered in ten minutes would have struck most people as ludicrous. Today, it’s an expectation. Quick commerce has transformed the consumption experience, providing consumers with faster, easier and more frictionless access to products and services. But in reality, this is not a story just built on speed — instead, it’s about the way convenience-led businesses impact customer behaviours and build lasting economic moats.
Convenience follows a predictable path: mass adoption, with companies removing friction and subsidizing services. Then, premiumization, wherein features that were free become paid. Lastly, dependency, when consumers grow so used to ease that change seems like an injury.
We’ve seen this before. Uber normalised ride-hailing with discounts, then introduced surge pricing. Jio had a free data strategy, forcing competition to adapt. Prime Video had unlimited free content, then they introduced tiered / rent pricing. Now, a similar trend is unfolding in quick food delivery, a fast-growing segment of quick commerce.
Quick commerce players such as Blinkit and Zepto didn’t take on big grocery chains by selling better products—they did it by providing better convenience. Traditional supermarkets and e-commerce were designed for price and selection, but quick commerce eliminated waiting, solving an entirely different consumer problem—time. That alone made adoption inevitable.
Now, this evolution is expanding to hot, made-to-order food. Rebel Foods’ QuickiES is the ultra-fast, made-to-order food platform in the quick commerce play powered by its cloud kitchen, with fifteen-minute delivery promise. Swish, a Bengaluru-based startup, controls the entire process from preparation to delivery, serving hot meals in 10 minutes. Zing is in the business of delivering freshly made wholesome meals with the help of hyper-local cloud kitchens and AI-based demand forecasting, in Gurugram. Zepto Café is doing that for coffee and snacks, reintroducing the quick-service cafe into an instant delivery ecosystem.
This represents a paradigm shift — quick commerce isn’t only targeting groceries anymore; it’s bringing fresh hot food to your doorstep. Restaurants and delivery services are converging as companies redesign supply chains to be fast as ever.
Once that habit is ingrained, companies bring in paid tiers, expedited delivery options, memberships. Delivery fees that were not a norm a few years ago have become a standard. Swiggy One and Amazon Prime are now no longer just offering free delivery; they are hijacking customer inertia so other platforms look slower or pricier.
Ultimately, that leads to dependency, as consumers willingly pay for services that used to be free — be it overnight shipping, cloud storage or ad-free streaming. Uber and Ola popularised dynamic pricing, Gmail and Google Drive made free storage a paid need.
It focuses on the convenience flywheel, a virtuous cycle that drives more demand. Mass premiumisation revenues drive the next wave of mass adoption. Amazon plows Prime revenue back into logistics, Uber converts premium ride profits into driver paychecks, and Canva uses paid features to subsidise free AI tools that stretch its user base. Not only do convenience businesses grow; they continually generate demand.
Fundamentally, this isn’t merely business strategy — it’s consumer psychology. People overvalue immediate convenience over long-term costs. It’s why we pay a premium for 10-minute groceries rather than waiting to go the supermarket (hyperbolic discounting). When we put in effort into a platform we feel switching to be losing it (IKEA Effect). Just like all those subscription models — Swiggy One, Netflix, etc. — induce commitment bias to such an extent that cancelling feels as if we are on the losing side of the equation even if we hardly used the service.
As quick commerce matures, the actual battleground would not be just the speed, but the ecosystem dominance. QuickiES, Zepto Café, Swish and Zing are among the companies marking this transformation — quick commerce is expanding beyond groceries to on-demand everything.
Convenience is no longer a differentiator—it’s an expectation. The real question is: Who will extract the most value from it before the next wave of disruption resets the game?
The author is co-founder & CEO, Rebel Foods