[HN Gopher] Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store ...
___________________________________________________________________
Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food
online
Author : juokaz
Score : 184 points
Date : 2020-05-27 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| codyswann wrote:
| Two take aways:
|
| 1) All of the issues are definitely and easily solvable,
| especially through learned behavior
|
| 2) Karen's are going to Karen.
| charwalker wrote:
| Ordering online is incredibly difficult and each time I try via a
| different site/store I end up dropping it after investing almost
| an hour to sort things out. I am in the Seattle area so it's been
| a big deal.
|
| My recent example is the Safeway site and trying to make an order
| for pickup or delivery. Initially I picked delivery, gave it my
| address, and it let me add things to my cart. I built out my
| entire cart normally, avoiding items listed as not in stock, then
| when I went to check out it gave me 0 delivery openings for like
| a week.
|
| I then swapped to pick up and it attempted to reconcile out of
| stock items in my cart with alternatives but for many I had to go
| back in and find alternatives. Items not reconciled where dropped
| from my cart so I ahd to manually check that against my list to
| see what was missing. On checkout, it gave me 0 times to pick up
| going out a week.
|
| So I swapped locations again and went through reconciling my cart
| again and picking out new items when needed. Again it dropped
| some items without alternatives so I had to check my cart against
| my list and again go through finding missing items. hen I went to
| check out, it again listed 0 openings for the next week. Trying
| to pick a new option reset my cart in some ways to the point I
| dropped it altogether.
|
| I went to one of the Safeway locations that day and a bunch of
| out of stock or similar items were actually there and I was
| checked out in half an hour, mask and gloves on, just fine. Maybe
| instacart or other premium services have this figured out. I
| haven't tried amazon fresh much too. But if they work anything
| like the Safeway systems then I'll risk the store run to save
| myself an hour of pointless online shopping and save on the
| premium or cost of delivery.
| monadic2 wrote:
| I have had so many bad experiences with instacart:
|
| * shopper buying yams rather than potatoes (note: this was not a
| replacement, they seemed to genuinely believe they had bought
| potatoes.)
|
| * shopper going to checkout before I can suggest a better
| replacement for an item.
|
| * shopper buys obviously moldy fruit.
|
| * shopper buys five roaster chickens as a replacement for five
| cornish hens.
|
| * shopper gives up really easily on trivial things like a common
| chip brand.
|
| It's frustrating because I can both understand the shopper, but I
| then need to give instacart more money to actually get the food
| I've verified by phone they have in stock. Furthermore, about 80%
| of these omissions are most easily fixable if I just drive to the
| store and buy it. So yea, I just do my own shopping again so I
| don't spend $30 on delivery fees and tips and end up spending $5
| on furry strawberries.
|
| I don't understand why instacart can't work with the store to
| pack the inventory by people who know where shit is, can identify
| products, and can inquire about inventory. Other delivery
| services do just fine with a two-legged approach.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| This reminds me of the price/quality matrix:
|
| * Using your own money to buy something for yourself: price and
| quality matter.
|
| * Using your own money to buy something for someone else. Price
| matters, not quality.
|
| * Using other people's money to buy something for other people.
| Neither price nor quality matter.
|
| It's one of the explanations for how we end up with so much
| waste with governments and organizations. They use other
| people's money to buy something for other people.
| julianozen wrote:
| I think the big thing to remember is that Instacart offers a no
| lift in model for grocery stores to compete against
| Amazon/Walmart without doing anything to improve aging system.
| These companies do not have the expertise to become full
| distribution centers build a website that their customers will
| enjoy using. They are in bed with Instacart out of fear
| mcv wrote:
| Sounds like instacart is independent from the shop it delivers
| from, and collects your groceries by hand. Is that correct? It
| sounds very inefficient to me.
|
| In Netherland, the largest supermarket chains all deliver to
| your home. (Used to be to your kitchen, but Corona changed
| that.) We've had our groceries delivered by Albert Heijn for
| about a decade now, and it's generally pretty good. You pay
| about EUR 5-10 for delivery depending on the time of day you
| want it.
|
| Two issues: when they don't have an item, you just don't get
| it. I'd prefer to get an alert a day in advance so I can select
| a replacement item, but that's apparently not an option for
| whatever reason. The other is of course perishables. Usually
| it's fine. Sometimes the bananas are a bit greener than I'd
| like, sometimes they're a bit yellower than my son likes (he
| likes them green for some reason). Sometimes the use-by date is
| in two days when we were planning to use it in 3 days. Never
| got anything moldy, though if something's moldy, broken or
| otherwise wrong, you get a discount on the next purchase, no
| questions asked.
|
| Not having to lug groceries around is great. Sometimes we still
| need to go to the supermarket to get one or two items, but
| that's no big deal.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Sounds like instacart is independent from the shop it
| delivers from, and collects your groceries by hand. Is that
| correct? It sounds very inefficient to me.
|
| Correct, or at least 90% correct. They have agreements with
| the stores they allow customers to order from (ie, they
| aren't operating rouge), but yes, shoppers physically buy
| stuff from the brick & mortar stores on your behalf.
|
| I have no idea if this is true, but I always assumed this
| wasn't actually _that_ inefficient, because "last mile"
| delivery was always going to be the most labor intensive. The
| large grocery stores are basically acting as local
| warehouses.
| blueblob wrote:
| Agreed. Shopper buys yellow cilantro with brown spots and bag
| is full of water. I plan a meal around protein and shopper gets
| everything except the protein. Shopper substitutes regular soda
| for diet soda. Everything at the store is not listed on the
| site.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| > shopper buys obviously moldy fruit.
|
| This happened with my last Costco purchase. I don't know how
| the produce was even out on the floor let alone being picked up
| by the delivery person who clearly didn't use their sense of
| vision (nor smell!). The previous time they picked some random
| substitution for something I explicitly marked as "do not
| substitute" due to allergies. I think I'm done using that
| service.
| Vadoff wrote:
| Yeah, if the experience was an automated warehouse in which you
| know you're getting exactly what you want (and if it's not
| listed, it means they don't have it), it would be a lot better.
|
| The whole checkout experience can be automated, and the final
| items only need to be picked up and delivered.
| davidw wrote:
| We've had an ok experience with instacart. I've tried to think
| of it sort of like ... when you stop at a little store in a
| small town before going camping, and there's not a great
| selection and it's kind of expensive. But you are happy to get
| some of the things you need, and it's ok if it's not perfect,
| because we're in the middle of a disaster of epic proportions.
|
| That said, I'm really looking forward to doing my own shopping
| too. Sometimes stuff comes to mind that I didn't think of to
| put on my list, or I have an idea for a meal, looking at other
| things.
| irrational wrote:
| Off-topic, but do you really view that "we're in the middle
| of a disaster of epic proportions"? I can think of a huge
| number of actual disasters of epic proportions (full-scale
| nuclear war, 100 kilometer asteroid impact, yellowstone super
| caldera explodes, an actual pandemic that has 99% effective
| death rate arises, etc.) The current situation seems pretty
| low-key compared to a real disaster.
| vmception wrote:
| yeah but the joy of getting fresh baguettes delivered instead
| of merely getting left over sustenance in an after thought
| after a long day at work
|
| another perspective
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| I find it hard to believe instacarts model is still the best
| way of doing online grocery shopping in America... In the UK
| there's Ocado that has their own warehouses and most of the
| selection and packing is automated. If there are replacements
| you're told in advance and can accept or reject the replacement
|
| Most of the main supermarket chains have followed suit and have
| similar services
| spaceisballer wrote:
| There are other options, we have Peapod in my area. It's the
| same stuff in grocery stores but from the warehouse. This
| pandemic has them overburdened and I can't seem to find a
| delivery time. I tried Instacart once and the shopper was
| great but with so many things being out of stock I end up
| having to go out anyway. That plus the markup on all the
| items (the receipt was $20 less than what Instacart charged
| me, not including fees and delivery and tip).
| monadic2 wrote:
| Agreed, I used peapod back in philly and it was worth every
| penny.
| mattl wrote:
| Peapod seems to never have certain common items, for
| example: Funyuns, diet Dr. Pepper...
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Maybe combine Peapod with GoPuff? They have never
| disappointed in the "I'm high as shit and just want some
| fucking Funyuns" segment of the market.
| walshemj wrote:
| And also substituting generic brand for brand gives higher ROI
| siruncledrew wrote:
| Interacting with instacart sums up the expression: _"if you
| want something done right, do it yourself"_.
|
| At least for me, having to go a store is not a big deal, it's
| just overcoming "inertia to leave home". I would much rather:
| order directly from the store, have the store pack everything
| up, express pick it up from the store, and have a confirmation
| expected=actual for the order.
|
| The abstraction to having a third-party like instacart do all
| the - for lack of a better word - "order management" just seems
| to create an extra layer of bullshit to deal with.
|
| Going to the store, picking everything normally, and going
| through checkout myself, while not as convenient, has still
| consistently yielded the best results - so there is still a lot
| of catching up to do for store/third-party services to reach
| that level of performance(?).
| Androider wrote:
| Amazon's Whole Foods delivery in my area is now direct from
| warehouse to home instead of in-store picking. It's so, so much
| better than Instacart. On my last large order of almost a
| hundred items, not a single replacement, I got exactly what I
| ordered the same day. Instacart is such a sub-standard
| experience, it's just fundamentally the wrong approach and we
| wouldn't accept it for any other type of online purchase.
| clivestaples wrote:
| I've had almost the opposite experience. I got one questionable
| bag of onions. Otherwise, after five or six orders, I could not
| be happier.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I've ordered items from Starbucks and when I walk in to get the
| order they state that the item is not in stock.
|
| The ability for grocers to know exactly what is in stock and
| what isn't in realtime isn't something they are designed to do
| and isn't a trivial ask.
| monadic2 wrote:
| Right, but they could pack the food and ask me to verify
| before delivering, same as at starbucks.
|
| In fact at starbucks I'm rather shocked this is an issue--you
| don't have the weird issue of products being in someone's
| cart while they appear in inventory, let alone blatant theft!
| You'd think they would be able to provide an accurate
| inventory in realtime.
|
| EDIT: also, to clarify, "by phone" in my previous post meant
| I called the store to ask if they have the item my shopper
| couldn't find. They put me on hold to check the shelves.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Another solution is to allow to made a purchase days
| before. I can plan my cart for a week and most of items are
| recurrent. So they know what they need and they can fill
| those orders in advance.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/wsonA
| dmode wrote:
| I only go to store because it costs $15 in fees to order $40 of
| groceries/food
| analog31 wrote:
| My experience with online food shopping has been mixed. They
| actually did a good job of picking veggies for me. My family
| doesn't eat a lot of meat, so that's not super important. The
| headaches are in ordering and delivery.
|
| The ordering systems have the look and feel of having been bought
| from one vendor, while their inventory system is from another,
| and never the twain shall meet. Bar codes were invented for
| inventory control, and it's a highly refined science. Even
| produce has a code. But you can't enter a bar code number into
| the ordering system.
|
| Time slots for picking up your order, that fill up and are
| unavailable. For many of us who are working from home, our time
| is flexible. Just tell me an estimated lead time and text me when
| it's ready. I'll hop in my car or bike and pick up my order in a
| jiffy.
|
| Now, depending on how the covid pans out in the next year or so,
| food delivery might have to mature a bit. I could even imagine
| delivery-only stores, which could have much better inventory
| control.
| bpyne wrote:
| I had the same thought about delivery-only stores. Honestly,
| I'm in support of it. I hate driving. But grocery stores are
| not up to the task right now with order and delivery systems.
| thejynxed wrote:
| Or enough people willing to do the actual delivering for the
| usual shit pay.
| bpyne wrote:
| No doubt. Even if we increased the pay or found another way
| to attract people as deliverers, grocery stores need to
| solve inventory and order picking. They won't keep delivery
| customers when they can't fulfill 40% of items that a
| customer requests for delivery. For anything they can
| fulfill, people picking orders need to understand
| acceptable substitutions without having to be trained by
| the customer like an ML system.
|
| My family used grocery delivery for 5 years with a lot of
| satisfaction. We had two people picking and delivering. One
| of the two people was a former chef and the other grew up
| on a family farm. They selected produce and made
| substitutions on an expert level with little feedback from
| us. We paid $5 for delivery and they never accepted tips.
| trynewideas wrote:
| Great timing, just had an online grocery order botched for the
| fourth straight time.
| chooseaname wrote:
| I trust Publix more than I trust Amazon. Maybe that trust is
| misplaced? I dunno, but that's where my trust lies right now.
|
| Would anyone at Amazon turn my raspberries over and make sure the
| bottom ones look as good as the top ones?
| code_duck wrote:
| Grocery shopping has been one of my main forms of entertainment
| and socialization for the past decade. I tended to go to the
| market at least once a day, sometimes three or four stores.
|
| However, given the concerns about the pandemic, I have switched
| to delivery and curbside pickup. However, I knew enough from
| reading the instacart subreddits to know that I didn't really
| want to use instacart. I don't like the idea of paying a delivery
| fee in addition to higher prices, for one. So I've gone with
| stores that operate their own curbside pickup or delivery
| services, such as Safeway and Whole Foods. I've been quite
| satisfied with both. As much as I enjoy going to the grocery
| store, it feels very convenient to do things this way.
| lowwave wrote:
| Of course! I want to go to the store and see the item and buy it!
| The whole idea of shopping on a web page may be convenient, but
| sometimes just seem very boring and inspiring for buying food
| cooking or having new ideas!
| gcheong wrote:
| Before lockdown I would walk to the store almost everyday or
| every other day buying only what I needed for meals for that day
| or two. After lockdown I've only ventured to the store once and
| have since switched to ordering from Instacart for most things
| but now I feel compelled to either buy more non-perishables in
| larger quantities or things I can readily freeze in order to meet
| the order minimums. It's been mostly fine overall and I basically
| just chalk up any mishaps, which have been minor, to the cost of
| the privilege of being able to wait out this pandemic from the
| comfort of home, but I do know that when this is over I I'll be
| glad to be able to shop in-person again for most things. I might
| still buy toilet paper and paper towels in bulk though.
| kbos87 wrote:
| I see a lot of commentary about experiences people have had with
| grocery delivery services. I think this may be part of it, but it
| isn't why I never have and likely never will use one.
|
| I think there's a large number of people who don't mind, and
| sometimes actually enjoy grocery shopping. It's a relaxing
| activity that fits into my week. For me, it's a chance to be out
| in the world, using my senses, exploring new things to
| incorporate into my daily life.
|
| Convenience is often what people optimize for, but not when it's
| outweighed by entertainment and other beneficial factors. When it
| comes to grocery shopping that may not be the case for everyone,
| but the opposite is far from representative of everyone, despite
| the reality that many tech CEOs and press put forward.
|
| Edit: I'm talking mostly about grocery shopping under normal,
| non-COVID circumstances.
| hinkley wrote:
| Friend of a friend was a UX expert at Homegrocer before they
| flamed out.
|
| There are dark patterns in grocery store layout that I'm sure
| you've heard of, about where products are on shelves and what
| products are near them/in a favorable position compared to them.
|
| They do that to increase profits. In a way, all of the 'boring'
| products you want to buy are soft loss-leaders. They might not
| sell them below cost, but they sell them below a sustainable
| margin, so your price for that item is subsidized by other items.
|
| When you make a web site you have to do the same thing, which he
| struggled with ethically and logistically. How do you make
| website dark patterns as subtle as putting something on the
| top/bottom physical shelf? Obvious patterns start to piss off a
| lot of people.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I loved using things like instacart but they're shameless about
| correlating my real life purchase history.
|
| I would be ecstatic if there was a privacy friendly alternative.
| Order groceries with bitcoin!!
| RaRaMama wrote:
| I like to pick my own avocado.
| sigjuice wrote:
| Picking my own avocados is my favorite thing. OTOH, I have had
| 7 Whole Foods orders in the past few weeks with avocados and
| they were all great. So I am not going back to the store any
| time soon.
| pdx6 wrote:
| I enjoy going to the store too, I want to see what I can make and
| the quality of the food before I get in line to buy it.
|
| I don't think online delivery has changed much since the days of
| Webvan. When I order on Instacart, Postmates, etc, I get the
| worst produce, wrong cheese, and just like in the article -- a
| single banana instead of 1 bunch. Like others have said, the apps
| need a lot of work, particularly around out of stock items.
|
| Unfortunately, during the pandemic, the lines at the stores were
| long due to social distancing and overall panic, so I went back
| to online delivery. The problem was that no where delivered and
| times were weeks out if anything was available at all! The
| delivery companies weren't even working the one time in history
| they should shine and take the grocery market by the horns.
|
| The upside to all this is I ended up going to locally run stores,
| bodegas, and farmer's markets, which didn't have everything I
| wanted because they are small, but going to 2 or 3 isn't hat much
| of a hassle.
|
| As a related side note, my elderly parents did "curb side pickup"
| for groceries out in Nevada. My mom told me that she often got to
| "try new foods". It made me laugh, but made me think that for the
| immuno-vulnerable, do they want to go on a forced diet selected
| by a low-wage personal shopper?
| koolba wrote:
| If these companies cannot turn a profit and provide sustainable
| employment during a mandatory lockdown then there is no hope for
| this business model.
|
| I'd love to have a maid come by and fold my underwear for $1 a
| day but unless VC decides to dump a couple $100M chasing that
| pipe dream it's not going to happen either.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I guess I'm in the minority, but I've been chomping at the bit
| for curbside pickup of groceries for years. Our local stores
| finally started offering it around 6 months ago and it's been our
| primary method of shopping since then.
|
| We've had pretty good luck as far as produce goes. I think 4-5
| things have been bad, to various degrees. But even then, it has
| saved a TON of time, even if I go in and pick the things I'm
| particular about. I'd say 95% or more is to the quality I would
| pick, 4% is "passable", and 1% has been "straight into the
| trash". The stores have never had a problem crediting us on any
| mistakes.
|
| It saves me probably an hour a week, plus there's reduced
| "impulse buying".
| pgrote wrote:
| >I guess I'm in the minority
|
| I am there with you. We've used instacart and walmart for
| deliveries and sams's for curbside pick up. Sam's has been
| wonderful without any issues. Their inventory is spot on 24
| hours out.
|
| Walmart is hit and miss with inventory, but it is probably due
| to lead time. It takes 3 days to get a spot and by then some
| items are sold out. Learned early to not use substitutions.
|
| The more disappointing has been instacart with aldi. Our first
| time using them was a dream. Shopper texted while shopping,
| asked about substitutions and communicated. The next 2 times no
| communication. Things were substituted even when we asked for
| no substitutions in online orders. Both times items arrived
| damaged. Crushed bread and smashed tomatoes in first and an
| opened bag of pretzels the next. Instacart costs more, too.
| dougmwne wrote:
| We have been having a good experience with the Walmart grocery
| pick-up app, good enough that I would consider still using it
| after social distancing is over. There's a few factors that go
| into this. First and most importantly, it's completely free with
| no markups, tips or extra charges. I can edit the order right up
| until the night before, so it's quite convenient to add things as
| I think of them throughout the week. I dislike shopping at
| Walmart but their prices are significantly better on most things
| than other stores in my area. Their stores are so huge and
| inconveniently laid out that waiting a few minutes in the pick-up
| parking spot is massively less time. And though the grocery
| pickers don't do a great job selecting produce, there's a fast
| refund process in the app when I receive something that's
| damaged/rotten.
|
| But all that is only a plausible replacement for a store that I
| hate. I generally enjoy grocery shopping, especially at higher-
| end or specialty stores and would never replace that with an app.
| Even Aldi is a delight in comparison with interesting rotating
| imports and close-outs.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Wal-Mart has the best pickup/delivery web experience out of the
| four that I've tried as well (the others being Meijer, Target,
| and Instacart).
|
| They're not my first choice of places to shop, but being able
| to reserve a slot a full week in advance before you even have
| to start putting together your order, being able to choose
| which items can be substituted and which cannot, and being able
| to add to the order up until about 12 hours before it's
| scheduled to happen are all pretty nice features that the other
| places don't seem to have.
|
| And the prices not being any more expensive other than a small
| flat fee (and tipping the delivery driver if you choose
| delivery) is nice.
| benibela wrote:
| I would buy it online, if it were not more expensive
|
| In the store I spend between 10 to 20EUR/week for food. The
| online shops have an almost 5EUR shipping fee. That is a 25% food
| expense increase, at best
| linsomniac wrote:
| One huge cognitive benefit of it is: When I'm in the kitchen and
| use the last of something, or it's getting close, I open up the
| app, scan the barcode (or search if I don't have the code), and
| it just shows up in the next grocery run with no further thought.
| nemacol wrote:
| "Allow substitutions" is the risky click of 2020.
| kirykl wrote:
| Maybe online dating sites will follow this pattern
| copperx wrote:
| Yes, but that's the "I'm feeling lucky" button if you often buy
| the store brand.
| SloopJon wrote:
| Whole Foods amusingly substituted hot sauce for baking powder.
| Less amusingly, Peapod (Stop and Shop) substituted Diet Coke
| for regular. What am I supposed to do with that? Maybe I'll
| order some Mentos next time.
| nemacol wrote:
| I had an order that asked for "firm tofu" and ended up with
| mukimame. Which, ya know... pretty close but still pretty
| far. :P
| jandrese wrote:
| I love it when you have two 10lb bags of sugar on the list, and
| because you left "allow substitutions" checked you get two 50lb
| bags instead. I can understand if you have to sub in the more
| expensive organic version, but the complete inability to use
| common sense drives me crazy.
| nemacol wrote:
| Not to mention the whole experience made me feel terrible.
|
| For the workers involved being overworked and under paid.
|
| The wrong products I received.
|
| The added expense in not making a trip to the store.
|
| My feeling of selfishness and laziness.
| seanwilson wrote:
| You can always do both. Order the big heavy stuff online that
| keeps for ages (e.g. beans, rices, canned tomatoes, flour, sugar,
| spices) and go into the shop for a few extra perishable
| ingredients you need for a meal when you need them for a less
| stressful experience. This applies even more if you don't have a
| car.
|
| For balance, 90% of the item substitutions I've had have been
| fine (most stores in the UK email you the substitution list
| before delivery, and you can give substitutions back to the
| driver when they arrive) and the picked fruit + veg have been
| good for me too.
|
| I had a quick look, but is there any data on store food delivery
| being better for the environment? Wouldn't it save a lot of car
| trips if done properly?
| elmerfud wrote:
| It's not that I want to visit the store it's that I can't trust
| the store people to properly pick out fresh produce or good meat.
|
| When the stock person just takes a bucket of apples and dumps
| them in without care so most of them are bruised, why would I
| want that same person selecting which apples to send me? Often
| times to find 3 apples I have to examine 10+. Most of the produce
| selection is this way.
|
| Meat selection is not much different. Selecting chicken without
| careful examination you'll get broken legs or wings.
|
| Now you have to consider the automatic substitution of equivalent
| items when something is out of stock. My dibetic friend was
| telling yesterday that they substituted regular mt dew for his
| order of mt dew zero sugar.
|
| Until the store starts employing people who care about product
| selection as much as I do, then I'll continue to make time to go
| to the store and pick it myself.
| nmstoker wrote:
| This is why I avoid online for fresh food, instead getting them
| to do the heavy lifting items and resilient commodities (eg
| they can't mess up a bag of flour, bottles of wine, beer, Coke
| etc; if they're damaged too badly they'll obviously be unable
| to supply them).
|
| Deselecting the substitution acceptable option is also wise.
| This was a major obvious flaw even back in 1999 when Shatner
| was pushing Priceline - obviously they'd have an incentive to
| pretend they had to substitute a certain percentage of the
| premium brand stuff for cheaper items and do it sparingly
| enough that they made more profit whilst trying not to lose you
| as a customer. My experience in the UK is that Ocado always
| tries to substitute items with a worse cost to weigh ratio -
| it's particularly silly because they think I won't notice
| (feels like they should detect that I'm focused and dial it
| back!)
| gramontblanc wrote:
| Seems like a bold prediction that most (maybe any?) grocery
| stores have the level of corporate organization or even level
| of education to even consider a "secret order substitution to
| prole cart-pushers who will then have to answer customer
| service calls asking why their order was amended to add a
| more expensive item".
|
| Someone down the line has to actually act out the 'evil
| algorithm', and will then have to actually interact with the
| aggrieved customers. In a third party delivery service I
| imagine it would be trivially easy to get the line workers to
| betray the customer / rest of the organization, but there are
| also none of the incentives to, for example, try to dump low
| velocity items through deliberate substitution errors.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > Now you have to consider the automatic substitution of
| equivalent items when something is out of stock. My dibetic
| friend was telling yesterday that they substituted regular mt
| dew for his order of mt dew zero sugar.
|
| Typically you have the option to indicate that you do not want
| any substitutions.
| alleyshack wrote:
| They don't always respect this. I've had multiple Instacart
| shoppers replace items without marking them as replacements,
| including replacing some of them with things I explicitly
| indicated I did not want as replacements.
| thejynxed wrote:
| A company I do contract work for banned Instacart from one
| of their local stores entirely due to customer complaints
| to store management about unapproved substitutions.
| wool_gather wrote:
| Purely out of curiosity, how do the store police this?
| (I'm not very familiar with how Instacart operates, but I
| thought it was just a person going to the store as a
| normal shopper in your stead.)
| alleyshack wrote:
| I'm curious what metrics are driving that behavior by
| Instacart shoppers. In my (entirely amateur/armchair)
| opinion, it would seem like the time you'd save by making
| an unapproved substitution wouldn't make up for the
| potential for negative reviews, which could get you
| driven off the platform entirely.
|
| Maybe a majority of customers don't care enough about
| unapproved substitutions to review poorly? Though reading
| through this thread suggests otherwise. Maybe there's
| some other internal metrics which shoppers or Instacart
| have access to that incentivize poor substitutions in the
| name of speed?
|
| Honest questions - I don't know anything about this
| business and it's interesting to me that it appears to be
| such a pervasive issue.
| asiachick wrote:
| i think you're right. It's certainly my opinion that I don't
| want a USA store clerk picking my produce. On the other hand
| here in Japan most produce is much more cared for, probably to
| the detriment of the environment but still, far less bruised or
| bad produce.
|
| And yet, AFAIK, it's the same in Japan. People don't seem to
| want to order their groceries.
|
| Which makes me wonder if there aren't other reasons. One is
| that there's no good way to deliver. You have to be home to
| receive. They can't put your milk, butter, yogurt, ice cream
| some locker.
|
| You have to be home to receive, at least for people the commute
| to work, means it pretty much has to come between 6pm and 10pm.
| How many grocery delivery services can handle that?
|
| --
|
| On the other hand, my mom says she's driving to the grocery
| store and everyone is doing pickup. The groceries are already
| chosen and packed up, you just drive up your car and the load
| the bag. So if that's true then people are willing to let
| others choose the produce.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree. I think you're up against some deeply
| rooted human behaviors of wanting to sift through and
| gather/select their food. Those behaviors rapidly scale based
| on hunger... but frankly, no one in the income bracket that
| can afford to buy their food online ever gets really hungry
| in today's world.
| hinkley wrote:
| You also can't substitute one brand of salsa for another.
| That'll start fights in some circles.
| klyrs wrote:
| Recent substitutions I've seen (where I specified "no
| substitutions"):
|
| Ice cream flavors: my favorite for something I'd never pick
| (still ate it, annoyed)
|
| Margarine instead of butter -- the heck? Won't use it.
|
| Vanilla yogurt in place of plain yogurt. Slowly eating it for
| breakfast, annoyed; can't use it in savory dishes which is
| what it's for.
|
| Juices: I can't stand sugar alcohols, and got a ton of crap
| full of sucralose. Won't touch the stuff...
|
| Not to mention the half-rotten veggies that I'd never select
| for myself / won't survive a few days in the fridge.
| duncanawoods wrote:
| > I can't stand sugar alcohols, and got a ton of crap full
| of sucralose
|
| I don't think Sucralose is a sugar alchohol. You can spot
| those because they end with "ol" - Mannitol, Sorbitol etc.
| I find it pallatable myself.
| hinkley wrote:
| Not justifying it, but try dewatering the yogurt and see if
| that does anything for your savory dishes. I don't think I
| have the right gauge of strainer and end up using leftover
| coffee filters.
| darrylb42 wrote:
| Dewatering is not going to remove the flavor and sugar in
| vanilla yogurt.
| klyrs wrote:
| It's the sugar and vanilla flavoring that I find
| offensive -- are you suggesting that both would be
| addressed by dewatering? I can imagine it taking care of
| the sugar (with several washings, I suppose?) since it's
| water soluble, but I think that the vanilla would be
| irredeemably dissolved into the milkfat.
|
| Alas, I've gone back to shopping due to these
| experiences, so I've got a tub of the good stuff already.
| So on one hand this is all academic, but you've caught my
| academic curiosity :)
| hinkley wrote:
| My theory being that drained yogurt has a sharper flavor,
| it may or may not mask the unwelcome flavors.
|
| I had to double-check. The carb content of the 'water'
| you drive off (whey) is pretty high. I couldn't say one
| way or the other how much of the added sugar comes out
| with the whey, but I suspect a taste test will tell you.
| If you're stuck at home anyway it's worth a go.
|
| It's good to have an arsenal of substitutions for dishes.
| mattkrause wrote:
| For what it's worth, "hung" vanilla yogurt makes
| absolutely revolting chicken tikka.
| kaitai wrote:
| Dewatering won't take out the nasty vanilla flavor or the
| added 12 g of sugar. Moreover, some flavored types of
| yogurt contain cornstarch to add body, rather than the
| milk content one would like from a milk product. Plain
| yogurt truly is a different beast that American sugar-
| yogurt.
| thomk wrote:
| This brings up another question in my mind.
|
| You are examining 10 apples, well, so is everyone else. So all
| that fresh fruit has been held, bare handed, by the person who
| picked it, the person who loaded it and x number of customers
| who've examined it.
|
| Not that ordering fruit online eliminates that problem but it
| seems like it would be a little more hygienic. One picker, one
| loader/examiner.
|
| Maybe we need a better way to see germs so we know when we are
| done removing germs.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The solution is to simply wash your produce.
|
| I'm not sure how the examination can be done at a later time
| than picking. Either you want to pick it or you don't. And
| different people have different standards.
|
| The picker should just always choose the best available.
| Running low on selection is what naturally forces suboptimal
| picks.
| mattkrause wrote:
| It depends on what _you_ want too.
|
| For eating as a snack, I want small-to-medium sized apples.
| For cooking, I'd rather have a few giant ones so the
| peeling is easier.
| tzs wrote:
| I don't know how standardized layout is within a chain, but at
| my local Walmart superstore the area immediately to the right
| of the entrance closest to the grocery section is produce,
| baked goods, and deli. Just past that is the meat section.
|
| Immediately to the left of that entrance is check out, starting
| with a bunch of self-checkout stations.
|
| This makes it quite reasonable to do a quick extraction mission
| for produce and meat that has you in the store for only a few
| minutes, with good avoidance of other people. The interior of
| that section is just short low aisles that you can easily see
| over, and square tables of baked goods, so even if there are a
| few other people there it is usually easy to keep track of them
| and arrange to have an obstacle between you and them.
|
| My current approach is to get most of my groceries by their
| free contactless pickup service, and get produce and meat via
| in-store quick raids. If while on a produce raid I see that
| there aren't many people shopping and they are doing a good job
| with masks and distancing I might expand the mission to grab
| other things while I'm there.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Generally speaking, I find that at most supermarkets dairy,
| eggs and meat is at the back, because they are intentionally
| designed to make you walk through other things to try and
| squeeze in more purchases when things catch your eye. And
| this was true when I've lived in the NE and in the PNW.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Yeah, pretty much every Walmart here in Reno is the same way,
| except sometimes they'll be flipped around (i.e. grocery area
| to the left instead of the right). Similar deal with Costco
| and Sam's.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I agree, I've actually found that Walmart has been the best
| online grocery experience. My local supermarket is Ok but
| HyVee has been wildly inconsistent.
| darrylb42 wrote:
| Not to mention expiry dates on products. A store is happy to
| give out a 12 pack of KD that expires tomorrow. Shopping myself
| I know it will take a couple months to finish and won't by
| something about to expire. I also won't pick defective
| packages. Both of these things happened ordering from Amazon
| before this crisis and I have not tried them since, or likely
| ever again.
| rs6 wrote:
| My wife doesn't even like the produce I pick when I get produce
| and meats so it's unlikely some store person or contractor from
| a delivery service app will do the same.
| hvs wrote:
| We've been doing curbside pick up for groceries for the past
| few months and fresh food and produce are definitely the
| biggest problem with the substitutions being the second. The
| substitutions would probably be better/less often in more
| normal times, but the fresh food selection problem is always
| going to be there. For now we do it because our health is more
| important than our fruit quality, but we won't continue it when
| things achieve some level of normalcy again.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Additionally, there have been times when perishables like non
| pasteurized juice, and milk have gone bad when I had them
| delivered. I realized that I do a good job of picking those
| items last during a trip to the store, and I drive home
| immediately afterwards, while the picker/delivery person is
| probably not incentivized to do the same.
| charwalker wrote:
| I'm super picky about my apples after growing up near an
| awesome apple orchard. I only buy a few types unless making a
| pie or similar. Each type has certain features I look at. I
| like eating crisp Fuji apples the most and usually only buy
| those based on coloring, shape, and the sound it makes when I
| pop it into my hand like one might a baseball into a baseball
| glove. The sound is critical to finding a crisp vs soft apple.
| No way I'm leaving fresh produce/meat selection to a random
| staffer, especially not apples.
| herenorthere wrote:
| As a person who used to work in produce in the US, just wanted
| to say the visual image of a produce clerk dumping a box of
| apples to the display is ungodly.
|
| Where are you shopping? A few discount stores might do that,
| but there's no way any prominent stores do that. I mean, first
| of all, virtually all brands of apples don't just come loose in
| boxes, they are layered with cardboard trays. So you couldn't
| just dump them all out at once even if you wanted too. Unless
| you want to have cardboard trays flying everywhere. That's just
| not a simple or quick way to unload even if you are being
| careless!
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate: an _enormous_ amount of food waste is
| caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It 's
| literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that
| it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is.
| There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on
| the shelves.
|
| Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like
| them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste. But I
| don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised
| apple.
|
| Broken bones in chicken aren't harmful--the traditional way of
| preparing jerk chicken involves chopping the chicken with a
| knife that just cleaves through the bones. Again, your
| preference here is valid, but it's your preference, not
| something that's objectively better.
|
| And these are some of the less extreme examples--being involved
| in my local CSA, I've heard people complain about potatoes with
| dirt on them, and _literally_ heard someone refuse to buy eggs
| because they farmer got them from her own chickens. A lot of
| people 's preferences around food aren't just arbitrary,
| they're downright illogical.
|
| Substitutions and expired food are obviously problematic--
| there's lots of room for delivery services to do better. But I
| am not convinced that the average person does a much better job
| selecting their food based on "quality".
| leetcrew wrote:
| > Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste
| is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's
| literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that
| it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-
| is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll
| rot on the shelves.
|
| that's a fair point, but it's not hard to come up with a
| counterexample where the produce is meaningfully different. I
| usually buy limes for their juice, and if I get a lime that
| produces less than 1oz of juice, that means I have to cut
| another one open and juice it. not only is this annoying,
| since limes are priced by quantity at my grocery store, but
| it means that I'm probably going to waste most of the second
| lime (or use cellophane to wrap up the second half, creating
| plastic waste).
|
| I don't care too much about the aesthetic appeal of limes,
| but I'm definitely going to pick them all up to select the
| heaviest ones. these usually yield just a bit more than 1oz
| of juice, perfect for most of my use cases.
| darrenf wrote:
| > Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste
| is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food.
|
| In London there's a startup which sells such rejected, ugly
| fruit and veg: https://www.oddbox.co.uk/ (no affiliation
| beyond being a happy customer)
| pkaye wrote:
| My understanding is the ugly food is often times used to
| make packaged foods like pre-chopped fruits and veggies,
| salads, apple sauce, baby carrots.
| bananapear wrote:
| Considering their stated purpose, the fruit and veg in
| their marketing are remarkably photogenic
| stickfigure wrote:
| On the other-other hand, Instacart et al are all shopping in
| stores that already have this filter. So you're getting the
| expense, questionable selection, _and_ all the waste.
|
| I love my local CSA box, dirty root veggies and all. I know
| that our CSA has seen a huge business increase (to the point
| that they had to refuse new customers for a while) so I hope
| this change persists.
| petre wrote:
| I'll buy them. At half the price. Otherwise they can turn
| them to juice or stewed apples or whatever.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| France had aan ugly fruit campaign because of this:
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-2693000/Forg.
| ..
| trimbo wrote:
| > Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste
| is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food
|
| It's said to be 31% of the retail and consumer food in the
| US[1]. While that is enormous, I don't think it necessarily
| should be considered unacceptable. The food supply chain is a
| system we want to have a lot of slack in.
|
| So what level of food utilization would we have to have for
| someone to deliberately buy a very bruised apple at full
| price? I don't know, but I'm guessing it's too high to
| prevent a food security issue in a crisis.
|
| [1] - https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/food-loss-and-waste
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Playing devil 's advocate: an enormous amount of food
| waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food._
|
| Playing double-devil's advocate:
|
| 1) Most people have no problem buying ugly food. Much of the
| standardization of produce comes from packaging and packing
| requirements. Non-standard produce is still consumed in other
| forms: juice, frozen, soup, etc.
|
| 2) The vast majority of food waste comes from unsold
| restaurant food and food that goes uneaten at home (goes bad
| before you can consume it). This has nothing to do with ugly
| food.
|
| 3) The bruised part on apples tastes like crap. It's mealy
| and sour and fermenting and off-flavored. It's not my
| responsibility to eat bruised apples because a store can't be
| careful in handling. Blame the supply chain and grocery
| staff, not consumers.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply
| refusing to buy ugly food.
|
| This isn't true at all. It's literally a myth made up by
| people who want to sell ugly food to consumers. Ugly produce
| is used as animal food, sold to food service companies where
| it's ugliness wont matter after they prepare it, or
| occasionally tilled back into the soil as fertilizer.
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-
| waste-...
| microcolonel wrote:
| Even though automated grading of produce is not unheard of,
| it's not represented properly in the market.
|
| I think the first company to offer automated (or just
| standardized manual) grading and pricing on produce could be
| a big winner; I know I'd use it. It'd be especially good if
| the process distinguishes produce that's just ugly, from
| produce that is flavour/texture- or nutrition-compromised;
| eventually the latter could become well-defined enough that
| it goes straight to the compost heap rather than waiting with
| the produce that will actually sell at some price.
|
| The first one that comes to mind for me is brussels sprouts:
| there is a huge variety in flavour/texture, nutrition, and
| beauty, and sometimes I really care about what they look
| like, often I do not, but also often there is a big
| difference in other qualities.
| wl wrote:
| > Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't
| like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste.
| But I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a
| bruised apple.
|
| If I'm making pie or apple sauce, I'll seek out bruised
| apples--and pay less for them. Paying normal prices for
| bruised apples? No thanks.
| mc32 wrote:
| I'm not even sure the person who randomly picks bruised
| fruit would on their own account eat bruised fruit--just
| that for someone else they might be less discerning...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Paying normal prices for bruised apples? No thanks._
|
| And because arranging different pricing for all the
| foodstuffs that look less than perfect costs more than
| profit on these items, into the bin goes perfectly good
| food.
| yuliyp wrote:
| Arranging different pricing for foodstuff that looks less
| than perfect happens all the time. How do you think very
| low price grocery stores are able to sell produce way
| cheaper than fancy stores. They buy lower grades[1] of
| produce for people who are more price sensitive.
|
| [1] For an example of how this type of quality separation
| happens, check out https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-
| standards/apple-grades-stand...
| wongarsu wrote:
| Apple juice is made from bruised apples. They have to get
| damaged late enough in the supply chain to get put on a
| shelf at all.
| ggggtez wrote:
| It seems like you are making an unstated assumption that
| food being thrown away is a bad thing.
|
| I'm not convinced. Let's say a farmer wanted to reduce
| foodwaste. So they only sold perfect fruit that they knew
| would get bought. That would drive up the prices of those
| perfect fruit AND there would be less fruit for sale in
| total.
|
| Therefore, some amount of food waste should be acceptable
| to ensure the best outcome for everyone.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Let 's say a farmer wanted to reduce foodwaste. So
| they only sold perfect fruit that they knew would get
| bought._
|
| Selling only perfect fruit is literally foodwaste right
| there. Fruits don't grow all perfect. If most of the
| fruit you see in store looks flawless, that literally
| means that most of the fruit harvested was either sold to
| another company or thrown away.
| [deleted]
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don 't
| like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste._
|
| I find that once an apple gets a small bruise, it typically
| grows larger very quickly. If you eat it immediately, you can
| just cut out a small part. But if the grocery delivery comes
| with 50% of the apples bruised, that means you're having to
| cut out (waste) a fair amount of your apples.
| charwalker wrote:
| Specifically to bruised apples, the bruising may suggest
| crisp vs softness and factor into quality of the product. If
| I go looking for crisp apples, I avoid anything with a bruise
| as they often feel soft anyway and aren't worth checking.
| They are still edible, just not what I prefer or choose. I
| get that is a luxury of sorts, but I'd pick other fruit
| before a soft apple unless it is for baking.
| [deleted]
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| You don't get any discount in this case though. You're still
| paying $2-3/lb for bruised apples that are like you said
| literally waste at that point and $2-5/lb for chicken that if
| you picked out yourself would be of higher quality.
|
| Even if they did give you a price break for lower quality
| food. They'd still do things like give you a pineapple that
| will never ripen before it rots like we received last week.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not
| actually objective quality.
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| It doesn't sound like they are claiming that their
| perceptions are objective.
|
| In your previous post, you trip all over yourself
| acknowledging that their preferences are valid.
|
| It's obvious enough that's what they are driving at; they
| want a shopping service that _accounts for their
| preferences_.
| asiachick wrote:
| This car has dents but those don't matter. Full price for
| you. Car still gets you from a to b just fine. This
| jacket has some holes and few stains but it will still
| keep you warm.
| moosey wrote:
| Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and
| one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and
| taste, most other differences being unimportant.
|
| A jacket with a hole has massive loss of effectiveness,
| and I don't receive a new jacket to wear each day.
|
| A car with a dent has significant loss of value, not that
| it's something I'm terribly concerned with, I run all
| cars until they die.
| incelmods wrote:
| there is not the day you buy it. you are absolutely
| correct. it got bruised being dumped in the bin in the
| morning, and when you buy it in the afternoon there is no
| difference in nutrition and taste.
|
| You should buy milk and meat that expires the next day
| when you shop. I still get the same nutrition and taste,
| most other differences being unimportant. just like dense
| and purposefully dense to get that much needed
| confrontation is the same thing, to everyone around you.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and
| one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and
| taste, most other differences being unimportant.
|
| That's simply not true. The bruises become rot spots and
| before getting there they introduce oxidation which
| affects taste. The shelf life is then also diminished not
| only for the bruised apple, but for any that are nearby.
|
| Relatively speaking, I think the bruise on an apple is
| actually a measurably greater decrease in (relative)
| value than the dents in a car.
| [deleted]
| simlevesque wrote:
| This is true in some cases, but not most.
| seneca wrote:
| If the vast majority of shoppers perceive a product as
| lower quality it is, almost by definition, worth less in
| a market. Quality is a very tricky idea to pin down (read
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you'd like
| to hear a lot on the idea) and claiming that your own
| highly biased opinion on the matter is what counts as
| "objective" is a pretty bold claim.
| jankassens wrote:
| I can understand that for a crooked carrot, but for
| example a tomato with broken skin actually gets bad
| pretty quickly.
| [deleted]
| pdonis wrote:
| Neither is yours. But if yours is satisfied with the food
| you can get by ordering online, you're free to order
| online.
| fsckboy wrote:
| in a competitive market (which US groceries mostly are) if
| the store has to "eat the cost" of bruised fruit, then the
| price will necessarily have to be higher on the fruit they
| sell.
|
| Think of it this way, you have fruit at home to be shared
| by all the members of your family, it was fine when you
| bought it, but now some of it is bruised. So now you own a
| mix of fruit: what do you do, throw away the bruised fruit,
| or trim it, or give a loved one the good looking one and
| eat the bruised one yourself? Those costs (tossing or
| trimming or eating slightly lower quality) have to be borne
| by somebody, in this case the whole family or a member of
| the family.
|
| You buy a car and you buy insurance for it; that's because
| a car is expensive and you don't want to bear the burden of
| a bruised car yourself, you want to share that burden with
| all the other people who buy insurance; and yet, the
| insurance company is making money, so apparently you are
| paying a little extra for this decrease in the variance of
| quality.
|
| Same with your theory of purchasing fruit: you are not
| saying (in your original comment) what you think you are
| saying, that bruised fruit is too expensive; what you are
| actually saying is that you prefer to overpay for expensive
| fruit all the time and not deal with imperfections. Because
| otherwise, if the supermarket could sell all their fruit
| and not just perfect fruit, and was competing against other
| supermarkets, then the fruit would be overall actually
| cheaper across the board; you say "you don't get any
| discount", but with time you actually would.
|
| I explain all this because it allows you to live your life
| feeling less miffed.
| barrkel wrote:
| What you're missing out on is information asymmetry.
|
| If you're insuring against a risk, and you have more
| information than the insurer, you may be profiting and
| the insurer may be running a loss.
|
| If you're picking out your own groceries, you can select
| the pristine fruit and vegetables, and the grocery store
| takes the loss. With a disinterested picker, you take a
| portion of the loss.
| dooglius wrote:
| Yes, you are correct that you are essentially paying a
| premium, but the issue is less about the item's cost and
| more about the need for time investment and physical
| presence--correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem
| like it's possible to get the same level of un-
| bruisedness from delivery or curbside pickup that you
| could from going into the store and picking fruit
| yourself.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Makes sense in economics 101. The reality is, the
| Instacart guy doesn't give a shit and will provide
| bruising as part of the service of schlepping your crap
| for you. The in-store shoppers don't really care either.
|
| The explanation that you're providing is really a
| rationalization for paying more to procure an inferior
| product. You're always going to have wastage of
| perishable items. It's much cheaper and sensical to avoid
| moldy strawberries, close to date meat and dairy, etc by
| shopping yourself, or hiring your own casual labor
| without some intermediary subtracting value.
|
| All of these services are hiding costs through VC
| largesse and exploitation. You can literally get more for
| less by just hiring a housekeeper and having them pick up
| stuff for you, but nobody does that because the costs are
| "above the line", and it feels less nouveau riche and
| more clean to have some service exploit the poor sap
| picking your banannas rather than talk to a human.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > The explanation that you're providing is really a
| rationalization for paying more to procure an inferior
| product
|
| the explanation I gave is literally for paying less, so
| you missed the point of it, and you are then blaming econ
| 101 for your lack of understanding. And you are mixing in
| other factors that econ 101 covers, but the point of econ
| 101 is to learn to separate different factors.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The Instacart guy isn't a magic elf. The $0.05 you save
| on rotten fruit is offset by a $0.50 in labor.
|
| As investors tire of setting money on fire, that will
| become more apparent, just as it did with Uber as prices
| went up and quality went down.
| [deleted]
| TuringNYC wrote:
| When I lived in Brooklyn, the standard at most fruit/veg
| vendors was to have the best stuff inside and the bruised
| stuff outside (e.g., at 40cents/lb discount.) We usually
| brought from the outside and did the math on whether the
| recoverable portion was worth the discount.
|
| Unfortunately the supermarkets do not work this way -- they
| seem to have one class of goods. I'm not sure what happens
| to their bruised goods, but I do wonder if they offload
| those items to other stores? Does it really go straight
| into the trash?
| satori99 wrote:
| My parents used to run a produce market agency in Sydney.
| Their clients were banana farmers and their customers
| were national supermarket chains.
|
| From what I remember, not much was ever wasted and
| trashed out of their warehouses. Any bananas that
| couldn't be sold in supermarkets due to quality or size
| issues, were sold to bakers and smaller market retailers,
| and anything left after that was sold as animal feed.
| seibelj wrote:
| I believe supermarkets then sell it to the next group,
| which are restaurants or wholesale purchasers that send
| to factories. Highly unlikely that non-rotten food of
| supermarket quality is wasted.
| frandroid wrote:
| I used to live 20 floors above a supermarket. I could see
| quite clearly when they'd bring in a large garbage
| container and dump hundreds of pounds of produce into it,
| pele-mele, and then it getting carted away.
| ddoolin wrote:
| I worked in a supermarket about 10 years ago as a
| stocker, among other things. A lot of our expired
| products were donated to various places, but a not-
| insignificant amount was also thrown away or literally
| poured down the drains due to laws preventing it from
| being sold or given away (IIRC).
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| Nah, if it goes to anybody, it goes to food banks (or
| other 501(c)(3) organizations). The supply chain
| bifurcates much further up; it'd take a lot of effort for
| a relatively low volume of unsaleable but unspoiled food
| at the store level to make it to a restaurant or a
| wholesaler.
| kaikai wrote:
| I live in the US and 10 years ago ate almost entirely out
| of dumpsters. Grocery stores throw out perfectly good
| food every day. If you ask in front they'll say they
| donate it, but in back there's a dumpster full of cartons
| of eggs with one egg cracked, and packaged food that's a
| day past its sell-by date. We waste an absurd amount of
| food.
| yuliyp wrote:
| A good grocery store will waste less. They'll have
| someone merge multiple cartons of eggs to refill ones
| that have one cracked (assuming the carton isn't soaked).
| They'll see they have a bunch of inventory about to go
| past sell-by and will toss up a sale to get rid of as
| much of the near-expiration items. They'll be careful
| about rotating stock so that the older items are up front
| so people who are less date-sensitive will buy them.
| kaikai wrote:
| > They'll have someone merge multiple cartons of eggs to
| refill ones that have one cracked
|
| That's technically illegal. Grocery stores are not
| allowed to repackage pre-packaged food. We have strict
| food-handling regulations in place to protect consumers,
| which is part of what makes food waste such an issue.
| dannypgh wrote:
| It's been about 12+ years since I've regularly dumpstered
| food, but my experience is that more food was being
| thrown out before (but maybe not much before) the sell-by
| date than after.
|
| I think the issue is that of given the choice between
| something with a sell-by date a few days in the future or
| 10-15 days in the future at the same cost, nearly
| everyone is going to take the food with the better date.
| Which means the arrival of a new batch of inventory makes
| the older inventory barely salable.
|
| Technical solutions could help here: it is taxing on
| humans and most POS systems to have to adjust the price
| of older inventory, but if that could be done
| automatically (or the labor pushed onto the customer to
| identify the condition in exchange for a discount) people
| looking for deals might help reduce this type of waste.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > Technical solutions could help here: it is taxing on
| humans and most POS systems to have to adjust the price
| of older inventory, but if that could be done
| automatically
|
| That's a pretty good idea aid seems it could be solved
| entirely by software (+some signs for awareness).
| dannypgh wrote:
| I doubt you've got a good data stream about sell-by
| dates, tho - the old and new have the same UPC generally.
| Maybe OCR of sell by stickers? And this doesn't help
| things that don't have dates, like produce.
| imtringued wrote:
| You just need to include the expiration date in the
| barcode and apply discounts automatically.
| mbrameld wrote:
| I don't know if it's still the same, but when I was
| running the produce department at a Food Lion in the mid
| 90s we would just discount the damaged produce and only
| tossed stuff that was rotting. Bruised apples got wrapped
| 4 to a tray. I don't remember how much the discount was,
| it was programmed into the scale.
| babesh wrote:
| That's because there are classes of supermarket instead.
|
| - Go to a cheap supermarket and expect bruised stuff and
| pick out the stuff you like.
|
| - Go to a more expensive one and expect no bruising.
|
| - Go to a yet more expensive one and expect nothing but
| organic and ripe.
|
| It's kind of like class expectations. You don't want to
| be known as the person who shops at a place with bruised
| stuff (and the supermarket appeals to shoppers that way).
|
| You find that in farmer's markets as well. Go to an
| inexpensive one and expect bruising. Go to an expensive
| one and be angry if there is any bruising.
| jmpman wrote:
| Just had grocery curbside pickup last week, including two
| pineapples. Both looked much greener than any I would have
| selected myself. (I normally select a pineapple where the
| inner leaves come out easily.) A bit of research online,
| pineapples don't ripen once picked. Cut them up, and they
| were both fantastic.
| david-cako wrote:
| Perhaps this was the "actual price" of the produce anyway,
| including the wasted and donated food. Delivery means
| there's more reliable metrics about the average quality of
| food stocked and expected by shoppers (in a given area).
| This is a good thing if they make it so customers can
| easily post reviews and request refunds.
| haecceity wrote:
| They should price the produce according to its quality
| then.
| beobab wrote:
| They already do to a certain extent. Damaged goods often
| find their way into the "reduced" section.
| ping_pong wrote:
| That's a great marketing gimmick that some companies have
| made, but it's largely false.
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-
| waste-...
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I am highly skeptical. The author of that article makes a
| lot of claims, but doesn't really go into a lot of how the
| information was obtained.
|
| I'm not denying there's some marketing involved here--I'm
| sure there is.
|
| But there's also some element of truth here. I've worked at
| a food co-op and they definitely composted a lot of food.
| In the article's logic, that's not food waste, but I think
| that feeding people is still a lot better.
| munificent wrote:
| I think it makes sense to be a lot more skeptical of the
| claims of companies like Imperfect Foods who have a
| vested interest in getting people to buy unappealing
| produce (from them, of course) than an independent food
| scientist staking her personal reputation on these
| claims.
| skywhopper wrote:
| That article is an interview with an expert in the field.
| You can look up Sarah Taber and find more information and
| citations. Just because there's not a Works Cited list
| attached to a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made
| up.
|
| You realize that crops have to have organic material to
| grow, right? Using leftovers, spoilage, and damaged
| produce from the previous crop is how agriculture is
| traditionally done. If farmers don't use composting, then
| they have to buy some other source of organic material
| and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops. You say
| "feeding people is better", but there's more than enough
| food for everyone. The answer to hunger is not to force
| farmers to give the leftover produce to poor folks.
| Rather, it's to give the poor folks the means with which
| to buy the food they need. There's plenty to be bought!
| So much that lots of it gets thrown out! It'd be much
| healthier for the entire system if we addressed the
| problem at the source and made use of the systems that
| are in place rather than trying to short-circuit things,
| resulting in a lot of unintended side-effects.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > Just because there's not a Works Cited list attached to
| a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made up.
|
| For all I know it _is_ just made up. Maybe if media
| companies got in a better habit of providing citations
| they 'd be more trustworthy.
|
| > If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy
| some other source of organic material and fertilizer to
| grow the next year's crops.
|
| Which, from what I've seen first-hand growing up in the
| rural Central Valley (and what I continue to see first-
| hand in other rural areas) is exactly what's happening.
| Those crops ain't being composted with any sort of
| regularity (I'm sure _some_ of it might be, since store-
| bought compost has to come from somewhere, but I 'm
| highly skeptical of the idea that the farms themselves
| are doing it).
|
| The nugget of truth in the article is that they ain't
| getting "thrown away", either. Rather, they're typically
| getting sold to companies using them for raw ingredients
| on a more industrial scale (think canneries and baked-
| goods factories and TV dinner makers and such) and/or
| (more recently) companies that specifically market "ugly
| produce", and whatever's left over from _that_ often ends
| up being animal food (whether through manufacture - e.g.
| dog /cat food - or fed directly to e.g. livestock).
| yellowapple wrote:
| There's a fundamental question that the article doesn't
| seem to answer: if "ugly produce" is a myth, then where are
| these companies getting their ugly produce, and how are
| they able to sell it at a discount?
|
| I'm fully prepared to accept "it's a marketing gimmick and
| they're selling at a loss" as the actual answer here, but
| it seems to go unasked and therefore unanswered.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > But when a crop is complete, farmers plow everything back
| into the soil. Some of it ends up as organic matter that is
| supporting soil health, and that is okay, too.
|
| Basically declaring that the waste is not waste. Solving
| problems by changing definitions.
| pdonis wrote:
| No, pointing out that what some people _call_ waste is
| not actually being wasted, it is serving a useful
| purpose. "Waste" means it is serving no useful purpose
| at all.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Plowing it back into the fields means less fertilizer is
| needed for future crops. How is that waste?
| incelmods wrote:
| it's not a waste of the veggie, however it's not like a
| huge amount of different resources were not spent from
| the time the plant sprouted to the time it was determined
| "compost this ugly thing."
|
| as an far down the line example - we hate DRM being
| misused, and by composting ugly fruit you are supporting
| DRM. if you have 1000 acres of crops, you'll need to fix
| your tractor 10 times (number out of my ass). if you sell
| a higher% of the food you grow, you now need 700 acres.
| You now need to repair the tractor 7 times. John Deere
| now gets 30% less money, and that 30% spent on DRM was
| the waste.
|
| there are other things. like the time of the guy who has
| to look at the fruit, which there are less of now. he's
| in the sun, he gets thirsty, drinks water. if he has to
| be out in the sun 30% more to look through 30% more
| fruit, he drinks more water. and that's a waste of water.
| jdsully wrote:
| If a field is harvested too efficiently it needs to be
| left fallow to rebuild lost nutrients. Leaving some in
| the ground is not waste by any definition.
| ip26 wrote:
| Well... You do need to account for the lost inputs, e.g.
| fertilizer that runs off instead of being sequestered,
| water pumped in for irrigation, gasoline to power a
| tractor, and so forth.
|
| A cover crop (e.g. clover) specifically for building soil
| that grows without aid of fertilizer or irrigation is a
| better story in this regard.
| jedimastert wrote:
| It's it essentially composting? How is that waste?
| encoderer wrote:
| Thank you, I remember reading this as a tweet but couldn't
| find it (twitter search is.... lacking)
| zem wrote:
| when you mentioned a tweet i had a feeling it would be by
| dr sarah taber, and she was indeed quoted in the vox
| post. i highly recommend following her on twitter; i have
| learnt a startling amount about food production and the
| realities of farming in america.
| dannypgh wrote:
| > heard someone refuse to buy eggs because they farmer got
| them from her own chickens
|
| OK, I'll bite- where else could a farmer get [chicken] eggs
| from besides their own chickens?
| kaybe wrote:
| Bruised apples cannot be stored as long, so I try to avoid
| them.
| dwighttk wrote:
| one bad apple spoils the bunch
| encoderer wrote:
| Notwithstanding the baby carrots example, most ugly produced
| is still used and sold. It's made into soups, salsas, juices,
| etc.
|
| I've read that one reason we get so many e-coli infections
| from lettuce is that there is no secondary market (no lettuce
| juice) so the farmers drive it to the livestock farms and
| track back germs to the lettuce farm on their wheels.
| thaeli wrote:
| The shavings from baby carrot production are still used,
| for juice and pulp.
| OJFord wrote:
| For the benefit of any other perplexed non-Americans:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_carrot#%22Baby-
| cut%22_car...
| mdoms wrote:
| Thank you, I really was confused!
| [deleted]
| scruple wrote:
| Not even. If the produce made it to the store shelves then it
| is by it's definition not ugly. They should see the amount of
| produce that isn't sold at markets because it doesn't meet
| supermarket chain standards for appearance. We used to fill
| up the back of a pickup truck, in the late 80s and early 90s,
| with reject carrots for $10 from a local farmer. They were
| perfectly fine. We'd always keep a bunch for ourselves, of
| course, but the bulk of these carrots were used as bait
| traps. That still goes on today anywhere that carrots are
| grown.
| MintelIE wrote:
| >I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a
| bruised apple And apparently grocery stores put people with
| opinions like yours in charge of packing produce boxes, which
| leads to lost sales. Nobody's arguing that they're inedible,
| but how much of a discount is the retailer prepared to offer
| me for accepting his low grade produce?
| awillen wrote:
| Not really. Here's one article that says otherwise (there are
| a lot more): https://thecounter.org/weve-heard-staggering-
| statistics-food..., but ultimately the crux of it is that
| there are things like applesauce and canned diced tomatoes
| out there. Companies can pay less for ugly produce to make
| those products where looks don't matter, so they do that. The
| market works well in this case.
| gvjddbnvdrbv wrote:
| Bruised fruit goes bad much faster than none bruised fruit.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| > Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste
| is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food.
|
| Price them down, ppl would consider the deal. It's a market,
| isn't it?
|
| Or, well, it's a supermarket being part of super-chains...
| Potatoes by pound priced like fruits.
| the_jeremy wrote:
| There's at least one company trying to do this - Misfit
| Markets sells boxes of ugly produce delivered to your door,
| and they claim to be cheaper than supermarket prices as an
| ugliness discount. (Disclaimer: I've never used them, a
| relative works for them)
| willcipriano wrote:
| My wife bought into one of these services, the $25 box we
| received contained about 10 - 15 dollars worth of produce
| from my local store but at a lower quality. It was also
| random and often contained undesirable items in large
| quantities (who needs 12 lemons for the week?, What am I
| supposed to do with 3 fingerling potatoes?). I used to
| work in food service and it was pretty obvious to me that
| they were sourcing items from Sysco or US Foods by the
| way the items were tagged and packaged. I think the
| shipping costs eat away any value you could expect from
| something like this.
| PretzelFisch wrote:
| Oh the automatic substitution non organic to organic is not
| much of an issue. But I have had food items like oatmeal auto
| replace with ice or a sponge. I don't know what is worse
| honestly the fact ai is so bad or that a real person will buy
| the insane replacement.
| stormdennis wrote:
| I always check use-by and best before dates. When milk can have
| a date that's over a week away, I really hate it when someone
| buys milk that's use by tomorrow. Same for for bread, cheese,
| eggs, butter, fruit and veg, any number of items. Supermarkets
| naturally want to sell you the soon to expire stuff so how can
| you trust their pickers? The answer might be buyers and
| deliverers independent from the shops.
| mattkrause wrote:
| A lot of the use-by dates are more like quality suggestions
| or even outright marketing (how could salt go bad?!)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/article/expiration-dates-
| coronavirus...
| bsharitt wrote:
| I used Kroger's clicklist when it first started, and it was
| find but got worse. It wouldn't have been so bad if I got the
| occasional piece of produce or meat I would normally give a
| pass too, but as time when on, it started to seem like they
| were actively starting to dump their worst meats and produce on
| clicklist shoppers.
|
| I also found myself having to go inside the store almost every
| time to go get the items that were allegedly unavailable. In
| the end if I'm going to go inside anyway I might as well not
| pay the extra fee and not get the worst the meat and produce
| departments have to offer.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| This was a point of price differentiation at some of the online
| grocery retailers I used while living in London. Some folks
| will be willing to pay more for "perfect" produce -- even for
| bananas as an example there's a need for a slider of green to
| yellow that is really relevant.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Yep. This has been our experience as well. Not only do the
| pickers have no incentive to do a good job (and often aren't
| even trained in how to judge the produce and meat they are
| selecting); and not only do mind-boggling substitutions take
| place sometimes; but in just about every online grocery order
| we've made in the past two months (so about 10 times by this
| point), we've gotten some items that were just plain wrongly
| chosen--ie we asked for one thing and got something entirely
| different that might have been nearby in the store, and was
| rung up as what we ordered, but we didn't actually get the item
| we ordered.
|
| Lots of these problems _could_ be improved through better
| technology (there 's a running joke on Twitter about
| accidentally ordering a single banana or fifty avocados, and
| it's amazing how truly bad the grocery websites are at
| representing what it is you're even ordering) and by optimizing
| the product selection for online ordering and delivery
| distribution (versus today where most grocery delivery seems to
| be done by store staff walking the store and building a cart by
| looking for the things on a print-out of the website order),
| but what grocery company is going to invest in those sorts of
| fundamental changes when the CW is that we'll be past this
| pandemic within a year or two at most?
| jandrese wrote:
| Oh yeah. We tried the Costco delivery thing once, but
| discovered that the "substitutions allowed" option is
| basically "fuck my shit up Fam".
| basseq wrote:
| Even if quality is there, how ripe do you want? Are you going
| to use those avocados tonight, or later in the week? Do you
| like green bananas or ones that are turning brown?
|
| Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale
| today?" method of shopping!
|
| Even packaged goods are tough. When I'm in a store, I know
| quickly which product I want. I may not remember the brand
| name, but I can scan the shelf and find it.
|
| Online, I have to sort through a myriad of options, not to
| mention sizes and variants.
|
| BBQ sauce, for instance, returns 58 results on Peapod. Sweet
| Baby Ray's, which I like, is 22 of those. There are 13
| different variants (original, hickory & brown sugar, honey,
| buffalo sauce, sweet'n spicy, honey mustard, honey teriyaki,
| sweet teriyaki, sweet vidalia onion, maple, sweet chili glaze,
| honey chipotle, no sugar added) and 7 different sizes (14oz,
| 16oz, 18oz, 18.5oz, 28oz, 40oz, 80oz).
|
| Holy crap!
|
| I know what the label looks like, and I know the bottle is
| about yea-big. The images online are 200x200... I can barely
| SEE the label.
|
| Then, what if what I want isn't in stock? Is it going to appear
| on the page? Am I just not going to get it? Would I get a
| substitute, as I might if I was in the store?
|
| By the time I do that mental exercise for 50 items, I might as
| well drive to the store.
|
| These are hard challenges.
|
| One thing that might make a difference is integration with club
| cards. Giant knows what I buy down to frequency and UPC. Why
| haven't they done better integration to link my in-person
| buying with encouraging me to buy _the same items_ online?
| ISL wrote:
| For me, the wish is for scripting. Most of my buying is
| algorithmic, but the filters don't match my algorithms.
|
| It is difficult to express, "Please give me the cereal that I
| like the most that is under $X/lb. If there is an exceptional
| deal, buy more." without an API or scripting.
| stefan_ wrote:
| This is like writing a cost function for a global
| optimization algorithm for a problem with tons of
| parameters. You will very soon find out that the optimizer
| is much more adept at finding highly rated, but extremely
| useless outliers than you are at writing a competent cost
| function.
|
| Herein lies the path to coming home to a cart filled with
| very-cheap-cause-it-expires-tomorrow produce and no tooth
| paste because it didn't make the cut under some top dollars
| limit you introduced to fix another optimization loophole.
| basseq wrote:
| Which, if you break it down further:
|
| 1. Everyone's "algorithm" is different. Even if you could
| bake _every possible filter_ into your eGrocery product,
| can you imagine the UX nightmare?
|
| 2. The "that I like the most" is a tough thing to quantify.
| Who is "I"? Me? My wife? My kids? My mom who's coming to
| visit this weekend? What do I like? Specific brands? Things
| I've bought before? From that store, or a different one?
| Things I _might_ like because they share characteristics?
| ISL wrote:
| That's why user-scripting makes sense!
|
| The downside, for the vendor, is that I'd also wind up
| scripting price-searching at multiple local grocery
| stores for equivalent items. If I can just curbside pick
| up what I need at both stores, they're literally next-
| door to each other.
| yellowapple wrote:
| The irony is that if those two stores were to cooperate
| and work together on a unified scripting system, both
| would _gain_ sales on average; yeah, if an ear of corn is
| 50C/ at Safeway and 75C/ at Raley 's, Raley's would lose
| that sale, but if Raley's happens to also sell mayonnaise
| for $1 v. Safeway's $1.50, and I can order both at the
| same time to fruitlessly attempt to satiate my insatiable
| hunger for elotes, then both would get a sale (and same
| deal if one or the other is cheaper on the chili powder
| and/or cotija).
| timthorn wrote:
| We used to have such an API in the UK with Tesco, but that
| looks to have withered:
| https://www.tescolabs.com/category/api/
| thejynxed wrote:
| Because they instead decided to invest their tech money into
| autonomous floor cleaning robots, if the Giant stores near
| Harrisburg are any indication.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I've noticed Wegman's has recently been separating fruit by
| "ripe today" and "ripe in a few days" and it's really great.
| Especially for things like peaches and avocados that seem to
| have a pretty limited window between hard as a rock and
| rotten.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| Wow, that does sound great! Are they doing that in store
| only (like separate bins?), online, or both?
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| "Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale
| today?" method of shopping!"
|
| That one is really important with fresh food. Maybe the
| lettuce looks good or the cucumbers, who knows?
| ISL wrote:
| Our local store, QFC in Seattle, has been doing a great job of
| selecting produce for our curbside delivery. Quality has
| matched or beaten what I normally select myself.
|
| I don't know where they're finding such huge broccoli crowns,
| but they're consistently doing so (we're ordering per crown,
| and paying per-pound, so the incentives are aligned there).
|
| On substitutions -- they require customer review of every
| substitution.
|
| (We take the errors in stride -- a global pandemic is a time
| that we can be glad to have such reliable high-quality food at
| all. The best fail was the day that Anjou pears got substituted
| in for garlic, but somebody found the garlic, so we got garlic
| too :).)
| altoidaltoid wrote:
| Your local QFC is really a Kroger btw
| alexilliamson wrote:
| Maybe technically in terms of ownership, but the QFC brand
| stands from Kroger IMO. I've never felt such joy in a
| grocery store.
| fossuser wrote:
| I would hope that grocery stores become warehouses and the only
| people allowed in are delivery.
|
| You could redesign the entire stores to optimize for this which
| could reduce the likeliness of damaged goods.
|
| Amazon would be in a good position to do this (the Whole Foods
| near me already has part of it set aside for something like
| this).
| wool_gather wrote:
| This would be sort of funny, since many operated like this in
| the (not recent) past. Customers picking their own products
| off open shelves was an _innovation_ at one point (and it was
| greeted by some people with similar disdain as our current
| self-checkout lines).
| tonetheman wrote:
| This this this. In our area you cannot get good pickers.
|
| I am sure they are tired or bored or something... but it is
| most of the time not worth the hassle. So I get it... but it is
| not a good experience at all.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Tired, bored, or perhaps the reality is that the business
| model simply wouldn't work if the wages paid to Instacart
| shoppers were high enough that they could reliably get labor
| who cared. As-is it feels like a desperation gig and the
| results match.
| anjakefala wrote:
| They substituted veggie soup cubes with chicken ones.
|
| I am a vegetarian. :/
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Exactly. Online grocery ordering still has a significant
| problem: accurately delivering on a customer's wishes.
|
| It's a complicated problem. Customers have various "squishy"
| preferences - your bruised apples may be fine to me. Customers
| also have dietary restrictions that they just can't have. In-
| store inventory (esp fresh items) is constantly changing and
| may not be up to date. Items can easily look similar but are
| actually different in grabbing the wrong item or substituting.
|
| When you go to the store, you can get exactly what you want.
| Until that problem is solved, grocery delivery will always be a
| minority.
| karatestomp wrote:
| All those things, plus:
|
| 1) concern that prices online are higher so the delivery
| option's more expensive than it looks (food delivery services
| do this),
|
| 2) concern that some or all sale prices won't be used online--a
| lot of my shopping past my immediate needs consists of checking
| the canned and frozen sections for any _actually good_ sales.
| lostapathy wrote:
| This is why I've backed away from it. I don't mind paying for
| delivery, but the fact that I oy both a direct few and a
| variable extra markup per item, and that markup seems to vary
| so much per item makes it hard to swallow for me. It just
| feels like scummy enough that I'll go to the store.
|
| Give me an option where the cost of convenience is obvious
| and straightforward and I'd come back.
| hckr_news wrote:
| Delivery fee + Tip also. Best option is probably pick up as
| you save some time without getting charged other fees or
| needing to to tip anyone.
| makerofspoons wrote:
| I have decreased the amount of choice and the amount of shipping
| required for my food by switching to powdered nutritional shakes
| like Huel and Soylent. No need to worry about the picker getting
| the wrong thing and there is less need to worry about the
| colossal amount of plastic waste my weekly shopping used to
| create. I feel great and I only wish that there were some way to
| buy various 'lents in a reusable container I could ship back to
| them, or better yet pick up locally.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Are you using Soylent as your only source of food? I have
| Soylent for breakfast most days and it has done nothing to
| decrease the amount of choice in my groceries; it replaces
| cereal and milk but I still have to go shopping for everything
| else.
| makerofspoons wrote:
| I get a meal kit too for variety- three to four meals a week
| from Green Chef depending on the amount of leftovers.
|
| Edit: If anyone knows of any good vegetarian/vegan meal kits
| that do better on plastic, let me know.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| I guess I'm an outlier. My local grocery has their own delivery
| service and I'm very happy with it. Sometimes things are out of
| stock and I'll make a 10 min trip to the store for a few items.
| Sure beats shopping for an hour and loading a full cart,
| unloading it for check out, reloading it, unloading into my car,
| then loading into my fridge.
| trophycase wrote:
| Duh?
| bane wrote:
| We decided to order a bunch of things from Costco a few weeks ago
| through instacart. Actually we decided to do it before then, but
| the site was broken for a bit.
|
| It was _crazy_ expensive.
|
| Not only the delivery fee, the tip, etc. But _every_ item was
| marked up significantly over the in-store price, with no
| indication that was the case. We even pulled out some old
| receipts to verify this price difference. Apparently part of the
| business model is to basically double charge both a delivery fee
| as well as hidden fees for products.
|
| The total bill was a full 30% higher than going to the store. On
| a $200 bill for a Costco run, that's a $60 upcharge.
|
| No thanks, I'd rather go myself in a hazmat suit and then
| powerwash all the groceries when I get home.
| hbhakhra wrote:
| We had the same experience as well. When lockdown started, we
| did a couple of Instacart orders and recommended it to people,
| until I found out about the stacked charges. If it was just a
| delivery fee + tip, I'm fine with that, even a transparent
| fixed percentage. The deception and realizing how much the per-
| item surcharge + delivery fee + tip was coming out to made me
| stop using them. Recently I've been using curb-side pickup from
| stores and its surprisingly convenient and no cost associated.
| The store workers even refused the cash tip I offered when they
| came to the car!
| gurumeditations wrote:
| They're not allowed to take tips and are paid garbage wages.
| Don't get too excited.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Some stores sell on Instacart for the exact price they sell for
| in-store. Fred Meyer / Kroger, for example.
|
| Instacart has a notice at the top of each store's page that
| gives each store's pricing policy. For Costco, it says "Costco
| sets the price of items on the Instacart marketplace. Prices
| are higher than your local warehouse. Costco members also do
| not earn 2% executive reward on Instacart.". For Fred Meyer and
| several others, it says "Everyday store prices" and links to a
| policy stating that the prices are the same as in the store.
| somebrody wrote:
| If I read all that, do I get my $60 back? No? Then I don't
| care. It's The Wrong Way.
| strictnein wrote:
| Huh? No, you'd read that and then not order it in the first
| place.
| somebrody wrote:
| > not order it in the first place
|
| Which was OP's conclusion so I'm not sure why
| understanding the nuances of the pricing is helpful
| logfromblammo wrote:
| Instacart also manages to "lose" the meat products out of our
| orders somewhere between store and front door. And all they do
| is refund the price of the items.
|
| So then you have to go out to the grocery store yourself
| anyway.
| mdesq wrote:
| Shipt does the same thing for some stores they deliver from.
| They claim something like a 15% markup average, but in reality
| from our own experimentation on items we most frequently
| purchased, it often hit 35-100% markups and higher. (Actual
| examples: a $5 watermelon for $12; a dozen store brand eggs
| $0.99 in the store but $2.99 from Shipt). Add tips and it's
| rarely worth it for us anymore.
| gnulinux wrote:
| This was exactly my experience. Last week I suddenly needed a
| toiler plunger in the middle of the work day. I can't leave to
| go Target to get that, so I ordered it online. There is a $30
| minimum you can spend to get it delivered (doesn't include
| service fee, tip, charges etc). I said fine and got duct tape
| and aluminum foil as well. It was the most expensive shopping I
| did since forever. A toilet plunger, bunch of duct tape,
| aluminum foil all added up to $50 including fee, tip etc.
| Thanks but no thanks. I'm not cheaping out on anything but I'm
| not gonna pay $50 for something I can pay $15-$20 on Amazon or
| in the shop.
| optymizer wrote:
| That's exactly what my experience was as well. Costco via
| Instacart was unreasonably expensive (30%+). We rarely use
| Instacart now. Most often, it's Amazon Fresh and we plan to go
| to Costco in person.
| fma wrote:
| Yeah I used Costco for a bit, than realized is about 20% more
| for us. Since Costco requires everyone to have masks I feel
| confident going there. It would be better if they were more
| transparent about it...
|
| FWIW you should "powerwash" all the groceries at home anyways.
|
| Also last I checked, Walmart has free delivery and same price
| as in store. But I've heard their employees just grab anything
| for you...so quality of produce is YMMV.
| ghaff wrote:
| In my experience, Walmart produce is YMMV under the best of
| circumstances. Meat options are pretty variable too. It's the
| closest grocery store to me but I can't really depend on them
| for a full grocery shopping.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I wonder if stores are finding that they have lower shoplifting
| now that their staff are walking purchases out to cars.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I use freshdirect and I can see why people prefer their own
| shopping. With the pandemic a lot of products are perpetually
| sold out and there's a week long wait for delivery slots. More
| importantly, the produce and meat they deliver will often be a
| day from going bad. I've gotten mushrooms that had more black
| spots than not on them. So I don't even bother anymore to order
| perishables.
| dsjoerg wrote:
| Came here to say how good freshdirect is. Been a happy customer
| since 2008 if not longer.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I was happy pre pandemic. With the constant out of stock,
| delivery waits and us cooking more (thus needing fresh
| produce) it's actually become used less by us rather than
| more.
| somebrody wrote:
| The way brands package, label, and market their goods is not
| compatible with online shopping. In the store, a person can
| quickly evaluate value and buy different options on sale that
| they enjoy less than another product, but are a good bargain.
| Online, however, that type of shopping is a rabbit hole of
| overthought. It takes too long. The only way to speed it up is to
| remove the idea of evaluating options for value. Make everything
| a good value. If you can't do that for some product, then let it
| go out of stock.
|
| Online shopping needs consistent pricing. People want to order
| what they like, at a fair value, and at prices that could only
| change every 4 to 6 weeks. If you're in the supply chain, figure
| this out please.
| gnicholas wrote:
| We had a Whole Foods delivery yesterday with poultry that was
| delivered without any cold bags. Who knows how long the driver
| was out and about before he delivered to our house, but the food
| wasn't very cold when we got it.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| I'm blown away nobody has mentioned Amazon Fresh yet. There was a
| few weeks early in the pandemic when delivery times were a
| crapshoot, but it's worked flawlessly for me ever since. Produce
| and meat have all been good quality. Meat is obviously in high
| demand so availability of certain cuts or types of meat(mainly
| chicken) is variable.
|
| If I had to give a criticism, it's that some items are shown as
| in stock, but on the day of delivery when they pick your
| order(which is evidently in a warehouse) it turns out it's not
| available. They automatically refund you the price in this case.
| tanilama wrote:
| Well...trying to buy strawberries from online store.
|
| I ordered multiple times from PrimeNow, and 50% of chance, the
| strawberries have already gone bad.
| yalogin wrote:
| I don't know how the delivery makes sense to people. We ordered
| approximately $200 worth of products from Costco and the
| instacart fee at the end came up to almost 80 bucks. That is
| something I am not willing to pay.
| dylz wrote:
| Instacart's price gouging is a bit of a special case (compared
| to many supermarkets that do curbside or delivery)
| moogly wrote:
| Not American, but I started using online grocery stores about 5
| years ago. I have not stepped inside a physical grocery store
| since.
|
| Sure, sometimes I can get a few wares with a crappy expiration
| date, but that's not a huge deal, I'll just eat that thing first.
| camelNotation wrote:
| I would pay for a personal shopper who is working for me, towards
| my interests, and not in the interests of any particular store.
|
| We can't trust store employees to give us the best products
| because not all grocery items are created equal. An apple is not
| just an apple. There are good apples and bad apples. I don't
| trust someone whose incentive is to sell all the apples to give
| me a good apple when they can give me a bad apple that won't
| otherwise sell.
|
| I also don't like that a store employee only works for one store.
| I would rather pay a personal shopper to go to grocery store #1
| and then grocery store #2 if necessary to get the brands I
| prefer. Having someone in grocery store #1 tell me "Brand X is
| out of stock, so we substituted brand Z" is not preferable.
| Larrikin wrote:
| This was always my issue with using a service provided by the
| store. But after talking to friends and finally being convinced
| to try it turns out that:
|
| Grocery store workers are almost never stock holders in the
| company that are trying to push up their profit margins at all
| cost in spite of the consumer. Grocery stores either have
| multiple competitors in an area or face an area where it will
| become a food desert, people will prefer a grocery store but
| their existence is no way guaranteed. They also can get their
| money back on products that didn't sell in certain cases. It's
| almost always in their interest to get you the best product.
|
| Grocery store workers tend to fall in the category of teenagers
| getting their first job that aren't trusted with anything
| meaningful, slackers trusted with the same responsibilities as
| the teenagers, and butchers/produce specialist/etc that take
| their job extremely seriously that care about what they do. It
| was surprising at first talking to them over years but there
| alot of people that take their role in the food chain extremely
| serious and really love what they do.
|
| The majority of food is mass produced, including the produce,
| so most stuff you have atleast a week left to consume if it's
| out on shelves.
|
| Getting something you didn't want usually ends up being as
| likely as getting something yourself you didn't want. It's
| almost always an oversight from someone that is actually
| intimately familiar with the items because that's their job.
|
| This is in stark comparison to a delivery app employee that
| really only cares about getting as many deliveries in a day as
| possible. If you get a single bad onion, they don't care so
| long as the person getting their shirt from Wal-Mart rates them
| well and they can just work for multiple services averaging out
| their numbers. Plus you aren't going to be a dick and not tip
| them right, what with the whole culture surrounding how you
| have to tip anyone doing a delivery for you?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'm in the other camp; getting delivery has _massively_ reduced
| my impulse junk food purchases. I couldn't care less about
| convenience or cost differences; the reduction in impulse sugar
| consumption alone has been worth it.
| ping_pong wrote:
| I've been using Whole Foods delivery about 3 times a week, and
| it's been fantastic, I may never go back. Sometimes the fruits
| aren't the greatest, but the rate of that is low. Compared to the
| amount of time I save, it's totally worth the risk.
| hkmurakami wrote:
| This is how I feel as well. I don't even mind the shopping part
| but for a mass grocer, the checkout experience has become
| unbearable.
| code_duck wrote:
| I was puzzled when this article mentioned Amazon and Walmart,
| saying Amazon had a disadvantage in providing fresh foods, and
| then said nothing about Whole Foods.
|
| I have gotten about five orders delivered from Whole Foods. I
| definitely like that they operate their own service versus
| using instacart. While there have been some issues with the
| website, such as losing cart contents (and one would think that
| Amazon, of all companies would have their site perfect) I
| haven't had any significant problems with substitutions,
| quality, or at the delivery itself. It was difficult to arrange
| a delivery slot at first. They seem to have fixed that. The
| sizes were unexpectedly small on a few things. That's about it.
| wffurr wrote:
| I don't think food shopping, at least for produce, dairy, and
| meat, aka perishables, is something that even should be online.
| Why does it need to be, anyway?
|
| I can see groceries, i.e. shelf stable items, moving largely
| online. That's already more convenient for bulk items (e.g. 40lb
| bag of cat litter).
| frogpelt wrote:
| There are a few problems with online groceries.
|
| 1. Out-of-stock substitutions. It depends on which low wage
| workers is picking the substitutes. They always pick items that
| are either bigger or more expensive than what we ordered if they
| can but that doesn't always mean better.
|
| 1a. Out-of-stock, no substitutions. I suspect that this also
| depends on the worker. Before the pandemic, I just don't believe
| that the store is completely out of the items and any suitable
| alternatives. I think the worker just got lazy.
|
| 2. Shopping by pictures can be deceiving. We once ordered greens
| from the produce section. What we ended up with was enormous 2
| foot stalks of greens rather than the "normal-sized" product. It
| wasn't the store's fault. It's just hard to tell the difference
| from a picture.
|
| 3. Not receiving part of the order. There have a few times from
| different places that we did not receive our whole order and we
| had to return (45 minute drive one way) to the store to get it.
| It was just store error and we weren't that diligent about
| checking every single bag before we left the store.
|
| All that being said, I think it is generally better than shopping
| in store. I think it's less emotional and more planned and
| therefore almost always cheaper.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I would happily purchase all non-produce and non-meat items
| online. The problem is that produce and meats are not produced
| with a consistent quality.
|
| A steak that expires tomorrow and an apple with a bruise on it
| are both commonly found in grocery stores and less valuable than
| the price would indicate. Normally these would just be left on
| the shelves to expire. Your strawberries may be nice and firm or
| they could be turning mushy. A container of strawberries is not a
| container of strawberries.
|
| In these cases I am not so much selecting an item, but also
| inspecting the item to see whether I want to purchase it at all.
| bmcahren wrote:
| My shoppers usually select BETTER produce than I do.
| kyteland wrote:
| My (admittedly limited) experience with curbside pickup seems
| to be that a dozen eggs is really 11 and you'd better
| thoroughly sort your produce after you get it. Expect a few
| losses.
| lifthearth wrote:
| H-E-B Groceries In Texas has been doing an incredible job with
| their cubside service. It costs about $5 and takes less than 15
| minutes to drive up and get all your groceries put in your trunk.
| This article was surprising to me because my impression has been
| the opposite and curbside service is an awesome luxury that's
| come out of this. Only downsides are having to schedule a pickup
| time usually for the next day and sometimes they have to
| substitute items that are out of stock. I wish I could link items
| so if they don't have bread don't get me peanut butter and jelly
| too.
| monadic2 wrote:
| Related article (cannot vouch for quality):
| https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-p...
| thrower123 wrote:
| Unless I'm buying cases of canned goods or other completely
| fungible items, yeah.
|
| Besides, Amazon has become so erratic with their deliveries that
| I feel like I'm back in the days of mail-order catalogs.
| niftylettuce wrote:
| If you're in NYC try out our service, OurHarvest.
|
| https://ourharvest.com/?coupon=HACKERNEWS
|
| Coupon code HACKERNEWS
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I am generally a little down on online shopping. With fresh food
| you definitely want to see it first (not all tomatoes are the
| same). I have tried Instacart a few times but almost very time I
| was disappointed with the quality or the replacements so I won't
| do it again.
|
| With other things it's the same. I have bought backpacks online
| that had a weird fit. In store I would just have tried the next,
| but online it's an ordeal to return things. Same for watches,
| phone cases, clothes and a lot of other stuff.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| I actively mistrust grocery delivery, because between when I
| place my order for items in stock and the hours-to-day when they
| pick my items off the shelf, I'm seeing on average 10-20% of my
| items being listed as "out of stock" or being offered
| inappropriate substitutes.
|
| This issue is compounded by the delivery service I'm using
| refusing to handle "replacement items" requests -- if 'garlic' is
| out and they offer 'garlic salt', you can't request 'twice as
| many shallots' or 'garlic powder', because their worker doesn't
| have the freedom to make judgment calls and doesn't get paid
| enough to have time for that conversation and can't make
| substitutions that add any new items to the list.
|
| I am being significantly undercharged for delivery groceries and
| I am getting significantly poor service, and so I will stop using
| delivery groceries as soon as the pandemic winds down in my area.
| In the past I used third-party delivery services (e.g. Instacart)
| and they were much better equipped to make sensible decisions --
| but the cost-benefit tradeoff of paying them an appropriate wage
| is such that I prefer to shop in person rather than pay an hour's
| wages to someone else.
|
| Missing from the equation is the time taken navigating terrible
| online sites. Search for "eggs" and you get easter candy. Search
| for "salt" and you get one billion kinds of salt, ordered
| haphazardly. It's impossible to navigate "the fruit isle" because
| they present everything in a grid of tiny icons. Investing the
| time necessary to build a visually-attractive site would make
| this more plausible, but would require significant levels of
| effort in UI and product photos that exceed the bare minimum
| exerted by machine-driven listings.
|
| So, charge me too little and the service is so poor I loathe it;
| charge me the correct amount and the service still comes at a net
| loss in time-and-money, because the UI consumes the hour of my
| life that I could have just driven to the store and shopped with
| instead, and then I pay a fee for having my time wasted on top of
| that. I imagine this makes more sense for others who have more
| complicated lives and need to be able to prepare an order during
| store-closed hours, but it doesn't make much sense for me.
| kube-system wrote:
| I've had Instacart workers make pretty good substitutions that
| weren't even in the app's automated list of replacements. They
| marked my original item OOS and added the new items as an
| "adjustment", so these judgement calls are at least something
| that is possible for them to do.
|
| The issue is that YMMV with the worker you get on any
| particular occasion.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| To clarify, my negative experiences with Instacart were
| restricted to the shopping website/app experience (which is
| no better or worse than any other); the Instacart shoppers
| have always made intelligent decisions on the ground.
| allengeorge wrote:
| I like going to the grocery store.
| holler wrote:
| me too, it's a reason to get out of the house, to see other
| people, to get exercise, and to look at all the food :)
| redisman wrote:
| Me too. I've been using pickup during covid but it's just one
| more thing missing in my life. I really don't mind browsing the
| aisles at 9pm listening to a podcast while I do the weekly
| shopping. I go to very large and dull grocery stores and they
| have a weird charm.
| zwieback wrote:
| Me too - we have a large employee-owned no frills supermarket
| and I've been going there for 25 years. The calming, trance-
| like experience of picking out my items is something I don't
| want to miss. I like the walls of cereal, the bulk food bins
| and the excitement when an item moves to a new location.
| sszz wrote:
| Same--going to a market feels like a very human experience.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I started shopping online during the pandemic and so far I really
| like it. We (I'm not in the US) have multiple huge sites that
| deliver directly from warehouses (all the big food chains + a few
| independent). Selection is massive, almost everything seems to be
| in stock most of the time, and prices are like supermarkets or
| lower. I'm especially impressed by the quality of fruit & veg.
| It's like they think "we can't deliver anything that's less than
| perfect because it might turn users away from our service". It's
| the correct line of thought but I wonder what happens to all the
| less-than-perfect produce.
|
| I'll probably continue to use online shopping forever _but_ I'll
| go to the store too closer to the weekend and to get inspiration,
| see what looks good, buy things I can't get online and so on. I
| enjoy shopping but I don't enjoy carrying home a weeks worth of
| heavy basics. I'll get that delivered to my door and just get
| fresh fish, fresh bread from the bakery etc myself.
|
| Reading about the US experience here it seems like it's a market
| ready for disruption and I'm surprised none of the big US grocery
| chains has succeeded.
| TurbineSeaplane wrote:
| I shop everyday and cook everyday.
|
| It's one of the joys of living to me.
|
| I have zero interest in someone else selecting my fresh foods and
| delivering them to me.
| sabujp wrote:
| ohh have we vaccinated everyone yet? i'll stay home and order as
| much as i can still thank you. R0 is still probably over 2 even
| with the increased temps.
| [deleted]
| jhfdbkofdcho wrote:
| It costs more, it's inconvenient, I often can't get the items I
| want and won't know about it until it's too late, and the in
| store shoppers aren't great at their jobs.
|
| I'm fine buying things off Amazon because if I order something I
| know I'll almost certainly get what I ordered.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I prefer to buy online but a lot of the time when I do,
| especially for fresh stuff like meat/dairy/juice, they won't fill
| it. But if I do go in store, I find it. This is despite the
| online ordering having refrigeration space for example. So it can
| be hit or miss. For vegetables and sundries it mostly works out
| ok. It mostly depends though on the picker I think. My local
| won't even substitute even if I tell them. So a lot of time I
| will actually pick a more expensive vegetable then I normally
| would because I know it is more likely to be in stock. In my town
| the organic equivalent tends to be in stock vs conventional.
|
| I do feel that with robotics, ML, and automation we will get a
| robust warehouse delivery option... even perhaps farm to table.
|
| The Ocado model should work in the USA.
| noetic_techy wrote:
| I think this has a technological solution, but it will be far
| more complex to solve.
|
| Imagine a virtual store shelf. I for one like to see competing
| products and prices for those "inner isle items". That could
| easily be digitized.
|
| Fruit and meat selection is another matter entirely. Short of
| some sort of remote surrogate system that lets you login and see
| the shelf at your local market real time, I'm not sure how this
| could be solved. Sometime I go looking for specific cut of meat
| and find a better deal on something else. Sometimes I'm curious
| to see what else is available and/or on sale. I think the capital
| investment to get something going would be a lot but not
| insurmountable. You may have to change the way items are
| displayed, have some high powered cameras to zoom in on meat
| prices. Fruit, I cant imagine anything short of a robot arm that
| allows me to login and inspect myself, and even then how do you
| gauge "softness" without some sort of tactile feedback. Possible
| but expensive to implement.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Eh, why bother? Move the consist goods online and have corner
| grocers with the fruit and meat. They are probably only 15% of
| the grocery store
| ummonk wrote:
| It's probably safer to shop in person from the store than to
| order form a delivery person / or instacart shopper who is
| exposed to a bunch of people.
| supercanuck wrote:
| Once Amazon sucks all the margins out of grocery, what are people
| to do when 3rd world countries are drop shipping food to American
| Customers in 10 years? How do you return food to a paper shell
| company based in Montana?
|
| yea no thanks. My trust in these companies is diminishing.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't think there have been margins in grocery in my
| lifetime.
| Spivak wrote:
| There are margins in grocery? Walmart and Kroger put a pretty
| swift end to that.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| While margins are low in shelf-stable grocery staples, profit
| on that side of the store is usually driven by volume and
| careful management of labor and process. Margins are also
| higher on private label goods, so promotional energy is spent
| on driving consumers to those products. At the store level,
| most grocery chains have started to increase their food
| service and perishable offerings, which traditionally have
| much higher (and more stable) margin which augments the
| profitability of any individual outlet.
| bpyne wrote:
| We had grocery delivery for 5 years pre-pandemic. When the
| pandemic started we tried to continue grocery delivery. However,
| we found several key issues.
|
| 1. A large number of people decided to move to home delivery. We
| couldn't get a delivery slot for weeks.
|
| 2. I was able to get a delivery once. We had to submit the order
| the night before. Then I had to wake up early the next morning
| and continually hit refresh on the delivery scheduling page until
| a slot opened up, probably due to someone canceling. However, 40%
| of the items we ordered were no longer available. When we go to
| the grocery store the items are there. For some reason, they show
| as out when ordering online.
|
| We gave up 6 weeks ago. People who were willing to put up with
| scheduling weeks in advance and not receiving important parts of
| their order are finally giving up.
|
| It's not really a preference. Our grocery stores are not setup to
| handle the volume. Fortunately, we're moving into farmers' market
| season so we can avoid larger stores to some degree.
| vmchale wrote:
| I feel like with various things being restricted, people were
| desperate for that social outlet at the beginning of lockdown.
| elicash wrote:
| I still think the design of these apps can be dramatically
| improved.
|
| I just fired up Instacart now for my local grocery store and
| searched for eggs. Featured was a dozen eggs for $4.59 (why
| featured?), and I'm not sure why that's featured when it's a
| terrible price.
|
| I see my normal eggs at $1.99, but then I can get the "store
| choice" (not sure what that means... it's not that the grocery
| store owns the brand) 18 count for $2.89. So unlike at the store
| where it tells you price per egg, I have to do my own math.
|
| Okay, math done, let me check American cheese next.
|
| There are three "featured" cheeses plus one "store choice."
| Again, I don't know what those mean. Then I see the deli sliced,
| but the deli slice is per pound not in ounces like the pre-
| packaged cheese. Okay, that's the same as in-store, too, so I'll
| give it a pass.
|
| Then I see a giant list of other brands, but they're grouped in a
| seemingly random way. It's not grouped by brand, or by count. Is
| it popularity? Why is there no way to sort by cost per ounce? I
| can sort, it appears by total cost, except it's not actually
| sorting by that, either, bc it still has those weirdly labeled
| featured four items up top.
|
| Could go on, but will stop there.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Featured was a dozen eggs for $4.59 (why featured?), and I'm
| not sure why that's featured when it's a terrible price.
|
| That's exactly why it's featured. This is no different than
| being in an actual grocery store. All the high markup items get
| the premium shelf space too. And stores often have the same
| meaningless signage on their shelves as well: "Look!", "Wow!",
| "Special Offer!", heck even some just literally say
| "Promotion!".
|
| They want you to look at that product, and you did, so it
| worked exactly as they intended.
| elicash wrote:
| > This is no different than being in an actual grocery store.
|
| On a phone, you've only got a couple inches to view at a
| time. It's TOTALLY different. If all you do as a designer is
| take things in store and literally transcribe them to a
| phone, it won't work. It's a terrible way to design.
|
| And I still don't understand difference between featured and
| store pick btw.
| kube-system wrote:
| Is there supposed to be a difference in meaning?
|
| Or was the difference in the text just intended to make
| your brain pause to consider whether there was actually a
| difference in meaning?
|
| Every moment you think about it is one more moment that the
| marketers have your attention.
|
| "Design" is very subjective. Whether it is "good" or not
| all depends on the goals of whatever it was designed for.
|
| Take a physical IKEA store for instance. If you want to
| make it quick and easy to shop, it's a horrible design. If
| you want to keep someone in the store for a long time, it
| is very good.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _On a phone, you 've only got a couple inches to view at
| a time._
|
| Even more reason to ensure the more expensive items are
| viewed first.
|
| > _And I still don 't understand difference between
| featured and store pick btw._
|
| Cynic it me would say: there might be no difference, and
| this may be just intended to confuse people who would
| otherwise just ignore "store pick".
| wanderr wrote:
| > Even more reason to ensure the more expensive items are
| viewed first.
|
| Not if you want your customers to have a not-miserable
| enough experience that they will actually buy from you,
| and continue buying from you in the future.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Marketers rarely care about you having a not-miserable
| experience. In fact, the key insight behind many of the
| common dark patterns is that you can inflict a lot of
| annoyance on your customers before they start to bounce,
| and meanwhile at each step a fraction of those customers
| will fall prey to the sales technique and spend more
| money than they should.
|
| (Consider: if your choice is between ordering on-line and
| going to the store in the middle of a pandemic, and
| you're leaning towards ordering on-line, will you really
| give up and go to the store just because someone sorted a
| bunch of overpriced products to the top of the list in
| your app?)
| dx87 wrote:
| My problem is that if I order online, there may be a few
| ingredients out of stock for a few different meals, and I end up
| having to go shopping anyway because I have 3-4 meals without all
| the ingredients. If I went shopping in the first place, I could
| see that some ingredients for a meal aren't in stock, and get
| ingredients for a different meal.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Besides cost, I like looking around and a trip to the store can
| be enjoyable on its own. Might see another store I want to stop
| at, get some nice views, or see a nice old car, and it's a good
| chance to have some thoughts without distractions. It's also the
| only time I really end up listening to local radio.
| Animats wrote:
| The current big problem with online food shopping is that it's
| being done by sending low-wage people into ordinary supermarkets.
| This is inefficient, but until recently this was a niche market.
| The trouble with doing it that way is that the ordering system
| doesn't know the inventory. You get some subset of your order.
| That's no good.
|
| Webvan tried to do it right 20 years go, with local fulfillment
| centers and automation, but they had 3% market share in 30
| cities, instead of 30% market share in 3 cities. Cost per order
| was too high. The Webvan execs went on to Kiva Robotics and
| Amazon Fresh, and Amazon will probably try this again. They have
| the market penetration.
| treis wrote:
| >The current big problem with online food shopping is that it's
| being done by sending low-wage people into ordinary
| supermarkets. This is inefficient, but until recently this was
| a niche market.
|
| I agree. People definitely want online/delivery grocery
| shopping. The problem thus far has been product misses on
| giving the customer what they want. Ordering online today is
| too much of a crap shoot. You'll get 80% of what you want with
| 15% replacements of a dubious nature, and 5% unfulfilled.
| richardbrevig wrote:
| Today I received my first grocery delivery from Walmart. I'm
| extremely excited. I chose no substitutions so only one item
| wasn't available. What I love about it is that the person
| picking up the food actually knows the store. Walmart
| launched pick-up service over 2 years ago and now they're
| extending that with DoorDash for delivery. Granted, the
| delivery people still have problems finding my home, but
| access to Walmart's inventory is a huge improvement for me.
| Previously I was using Shipt and half of the time they'd just
| drop products like bananas or frozen blueberries or something
| else because they couldn't keep up with whether it was in the
| store or not, or if the store changed brands. The past 4+
| orders from Shipt all had mistakes, usually multiple. Either
| incorrect product or just flat didn't deliver product but
| charged me for it (in that case I'd get a refund, didn't mess
| with wrong products).
| ghaff wrote:
| If I could have "near-perfect" online shopping for a $5-10
| delivery charge... Sure. The one time I've really tried it
| was when I had a broken foot and doing a full grocery
| shopping was a PITA. So I used delivery. I'd get most of what
| I needed with some questionable substitutions. But that was
| mostly OK because driving to the store and picking up a few
| things in a shoulder bag wasn't a big deal. Just a full
| grocery shopping was.
|
| I haven't even tried in the current situation. If I go
| relatively early on a weekday, I find it pretty manageable
| and uncrowded.
| servercobra wrote:
| That's basically what Amazon Fresh is. $5 or $7 delivery
| tip (I leave what they suggest), no extra fees assuming
| you've got Amazon Prime, and comparable prices to in-store
| at Ralph's. I very rarely have things out of stock once I
| order, produce is generally good, meat has been great. I
| think the warehouse-direct-to-consumer style is the way to
| go, rather than shopper-goes-to-store-for-me style. Peapod,
| in the sibling comment, is another similar option.
| Izkata wrote:
| You're describing what Peapod always was for me, for the
| three years I had it. I'd still be using it if they hadn't
| stopped delivering here; they spoiled me to the point I'm
| not even going to try Instacart/etc.
|
| The one exception was that you couldn't choose your own
| substitutions, but you could toggle whether to get the
| substitute or just not get that item (so at least you don't
| waste food if it's something you really don't want).
| ghaff wrote:
| Peapod was what I used as it was the only thing available
| where I live until quite recently.
|
| It wasn't terrible but, for me, it didn't really end up
| eliminating the need to go to the store which under
| normal circumstances pretty much eliminated most of the
| value.
| [deleted]
| majormajor wrote:
| Amazon does this sort of direct fulfillment under the Prime Now
| name. They don't do a great job of keeping a consistent set of
| things in stock, though.
|
| Kroger brands also do this. But you can still get inventory
| problems - something the system thinks is in stock on Monday at
| noon when you place the order can be gone by Tuesday at 6 when
| they're packing your order for you.
|
| Both of those have been way better in my experience than
| Instacart, though.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Amazon does this sort of direct fulfillment under the Prime
| Now name.
|
| Do they? When I order, the food comes from my local Whole
| Foods in a passenger vehicle, and I get the same OOS issues
| as Instacart. How is the process any different than how
| Instacart works?
| _n_b_ wrote:
| I guess this varies by location. Prime Now for me (in
| Paris) comes from one location in the city in a delivery
| van.
| noneeeed wrote:
| It's interesting watching discussions about this from the UK. The
| last stat I can find was that around 25% of people do some or all
| of their grocery shopping online. Most of the time it works
| really well.
|
| Here, most of the supermarkets now do their online fullfillment
| from warehouses, not the shop floor, using purpose built delivery
| vehicals. One, Ocado (who are doing amazing tech work with robots
| and planning) are entirely online, while also whitelabelling
| their logistics for another supermarket.
|
| On the whole the quality is perfect, it's not "bottom of the
| barrel", fruit is fresh, things tend to have long dates on them.
| While you do get substitutions from time to time, they seem to
| have got rarer as they have got better at predicting demand.
|
| The main downside for my wife, who insists on shopping in person,
| is that you don't get the really good deals on stuff, as it's
| always on the short-dated stuff they want to get off the shelves.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Interestingly, the article does not take into account prices. I
| thought about using online food services, but found that prices
| are about 20-50 % higher than in a supermarket, so it is
| supermarket for me.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I know it's pandemic-anathema, irresponsible, whatever... but I
| find myself going to the grocery store more often than I did
| before the lockdown, just because I'm so bored (mostly
| subconscious at the time I do it, but clear in retrospect).
|
| If going out to the grocery store is my only non-family human
| contact during the day, I find myself finding pettier and pettier
| reasons to go out and buy things. "Oh, I guess I'm running low on
| milk. Oh, I'm running low on cheese. Hm, maybe I'll just get a
| sandwich..."
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| I mean, are you wearing a mask? There's nothing particularly
| wrong with going to a grocery store if you're keeping social
| distancing and wearing a mask.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Seattle, so yeah.
| ping_pong wrote:
| Social distancing is another myth. In a place like a
| supermarket, microdroplets with SARS-CoV-2 will linger in the
| air for 10 minutes. Social distancing is meaningless.
| leetcrew wrote:
| okay, I'll bite. you're ignoring a lot of important
| variables here. the total volume and circulation of air,
| number of people in the store, your distance from other
| people, and whether you and others wear masks all affect
| the probability that you get infected when you go to the
| store. if you, the other shoppers, and the store do
| everything right, the odds of infection are pretty low.
| ping_pong wrote:
| I said social distancing, not wearing masks. Everyone
| wearing masks is very, very effective in stopping the
| spread. I've been saying it for months even when the CDC
| and WHO said the opposite, and some sheeple started to
| parrot that malicious misinformation.
|
| Regarding social distancing, which I specifically
| mentioned, someone put in the effort to calculate a model
| and simulate it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv9JQ0iPfgE
|
| Have you done the same or are you just guessing?
| akpq19 wrote:
| Here in Europe the official government propaganda in
| February/March was that masks were entirely useless. Like
| you, I thought that was nonsense.
|
| Now in May one is required to wear toy masks in
| supermarkets (scarf is also allowed). The official
| propaganda says they are effective.
|
| Government at work. The bailouts have already begun.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The only difference between you and the 300 million other
| people in this country who did that, is that you admit it to
| yourself.
| danans wrote:
| > pettier and pettier reasons
|
| Doesn't seem petty to me, but if you feel that, there are other
| things you could do to get other human contact, like taking a
| walk and chatting with (socially distanced) neighbors.
| ramoz wrote:
| This study needs more skepticism. Who are the consultant's
| clients? Who were the population polled?
|
| I don't know many younger folks who don't try to automate every
| aspect of their lives including grocery.
| ideals wrote:
| For the same reason I don't like ordering from Uber eats, I just
| can't justify pissing away all that money on something I can go
| do in the same amount of time.
|
| Online grocery shopping works great if you have a lot of
| disposable income, but I just can't justify my grocery bill going
| up so much to cover the tech salaries at Amazon and Instacart for
| a delivery service.
| slouch wrote:
| We just started ordering curbside pickup at the grocery store
| and there might be a fee but it's nothing compared to delivery.
| drwiggly wrote:
| Uh tried to order stuff from a "service". Nothing was ever able
| to be scheduled two months ago. Would rather kinda goes out the
| window if you can't even get delivery service.
| rasfincher wrote:
| We've been using Instacart more during the pandemic and we've
| found that it makes shopping for substitutions much harder.
| Instacart has about as good of a system for replacements as
| possible IMO but I still prefer to be able to adapt and change
| what we're planning to eat on the fly, in the store. On the other
| hand we have started to widen our recipe horizons by being forced
| to use unexpected replacements.
| [deleted]
| yellowapple wrote:
| For me, I just need to get out of the apartment every once in
| awhile, and grocery shopping's a reasonable excuse to do so. Plus
| I gotta run my car every few days to keep the battery from dying
| (I have a battery tender, but it'd involve either parking in a
| garage I'm currently using for storage or running an extension
| cord from said garage to wherever I ended up parking).
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Somewhere the former CEO of Webvan[1] is rolling around laughing
| on the floor.
|
| [1] https://groundfloorpartners.com/lessons-from-webvan/
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