The scene on upper Madison Avenue, just below the Whitney earlier this summer…Stacks of Amazon boxes and padded envelopes sprawling across the sidewalk as delivery people sort through what appeared to be the contents to two trucks.

How do you deliver to apartments when no one is home, where can packages be stored at buildings with doormen? Where do you sort packages when it is raining?

Whole Foods has a contract with Instacart for home delivery in at least some cities. The NY Times recently did a story on Sinclair Browne who does deliveries in New York for the grocery store, Peapod.Amazon is experimenting with same-day or same-hour deliveries of orders.

Could it develop a database of every customer and the hours they are typically at home, coupled with current orders from Whole Foods, Amazon, Amazon Prime Pantry and perhaps dry cleaning ready for delivery?