
How Walmart plans to transform the way we buy groceries - eplanit
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-walmart-plans-to-transform-the-way-we-buy-groceries/2016/10/05/ee4d9f60-7dbd-11e6-9070-5c4905bf40dc_story.html?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_na
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Grishnakh
Ok, I just skimmed the article, and saw the part about how Walmart's personal
shoppers will check your produce and only pick good stuff to give to you,
because they don't want a "trust fail" (people aren't going to use this for
buying produce if they get rotten, overripe, etc. produce delivered to them or
broken eggs). My question here is: why do in-store shoppers not get the same
treatment? Why are they even offering crappy produce that their personal
shoppers now have to pick through for non-bruised apples? Wouldn't it make
more sense to have produce workers check out all the produce before putting it
out and tossing the bad stuff, and then checking over it periodically and
tossing out anything that's gone bad? Or would that cut into profits too much
to not take advantage of shoppers who aren't as savvy about not buying bad
produce?

Finally, maybe I'm just weird, but I actually like going grocery shopping to
an extent. Since I buy so much stuff online now (due to both cost and
convenience for many things: it's usually much cheaper, and also frequently
much easier to find exactly what I want instead of having to call around and
see who has something in stock), going shopping for groceries gives me a
chance to get out of my bubble and be around other people besides my coworkers
and see people in a public setting, and also get a little exercise and also
get to browse things. You're not going to save any money buying groceries
online (it doesn't save money the way it does for some other goods with a
higher "value density"), and there's a huge variety of different foods out
there, with new stuff coming out all the time. I guess someone with small kids
probably sees things differently.

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h4nkoslo
"Why are they even offering crappy produce that their personal shoppers now
have to pick through for non-bruised apples?"

Produce follows a distribution along all characteristics, and that
distribution changes over time. There's some you could discard a priori, but
then there's the damage from customers manhandling it, the normal aging
process, etc.

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HeyLaughingBoy
That's all true. But despite their other benefits, WalMart has by far the
consistently worst produce of any store I've ever shopped in.

