It was a big year for the online grocery business. Amazon launched same-day deliveries from Whole Foods Markets. Instacart, meanwhile, raised two mega-rounds of funding totaling more than $1 billion, raising its valuation to nearly $8 billion.

Those two developments seem like they would suck the oxygen out of the market for Bentley Hall, the CEO of a much smaller grocery delivery startup, Good Eggs. In fact, Good Eggs had a near-death experience not long ago, after it expanded too aggressively and was forced to retrench to its home market of the San Francisco Bay Area. Hired a few years ago to lead a turnaround, Mr. Hall has made its operations more efficient and increased the amount of money people spend on the service by broadening its selection.