GoPuff: unit economics that shows exactly where the margin disappears

Context: consulting work in e-commerce and fast delivery. Clients included GoPuff, a US on-demand convenience delivery service. My role: pre-sales, strategic consulting, and end-to-end project delivery.

What I did

• Unit economics. Rebuilt unit economics models for 10+ consulting clients: exactly where profitability leaks and what to do about it so the business can scale without losses growing alongside it.
• Market analysis. Deep market and competitor research as the basis for positioning, pricing models, and go-to-market strategy.
• Project delivery. From technical documentation to coordinating engineers, design, and marketing — on time and on budget.
• Technology trends. Tracking what actually changes the game versus what is just noise — and advising clients accordingly.

Why unit economics specifically

It is the least glamorous and most useful part of the work. It does not produce impressive growth charts — it answers a simple question: are you making money, or paying to grow? Very often a business turns out to be growing and losing money at the same time, and the faster it grows, the faster it loses.

What this means for your store

In fast delivery the margin is thin, and every uncounted cent shows up immediately. In online retail, three things almost nobody tracks carefully cause exactly the same problem:

• Failed and returned orders. An order ships, gets refused or returned, and you pay for the shipping twice. In the sales report it looks like revenue; in the cash account it is a loss.
• The cost of processing an order. The hours an owner or manager spends on messages and calls rarely make it into the cost calculation — and it is the most expensive resource in the company.
• Discounts. A "−20%" promotion on a product with a 35% margin eats more than half the profit — and almost nobody runs the numbers before launching the promotion.

Working out a store’s unit economics takes a few days with your own data. After that, most decisions about assortment, channels, and promotions make themselves.