In a story today called ‘Filling Pantries Without a Middleman,’ the New York times wonders if perhaps the perfect symbol of the dot-com bust–the online grocery business–is making comeback.

Five years later, though, the idea behind Webvan is finally starting to look good. Since its demise, smaller players have been slowly and quietly building online groceries into a legitimate business. The most intriguing of the group is a little New York company called FreshDirect that may well be offering us a glimpse of the next wave of Internet commerce.

It has already become something of a cult in New York, thanks to produce, fish and meats that put most supermarkets to shame, usually at lower prices. A handful of new apartment buildings have installed refrigerators in their lobbies, built to FreshDirect specifications, to lure residents who want their groceries delivered during the day. Real estate agents selling home buyers on up-and-coming neighborhoods like Inwood have taken to emphasizing that FreshDirect delivers there. When a friend of mine saw a delivery man walking on her Brooklyn street, she chased him down to confirm that, indeed, the company had begun delivering to her part of Park Slope.

Today, which is FreshDirect’s busiest day of the year, it will deliver many of the 2,000 fully cooked Thanksgiving dinners and 6,000 uncooked turkeys that it has sold in recent weeks. Operating out of a single warehouse in Queens, the company brings in about $240 million a year, up from nothing in 2001.

Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times