
Show HN: Get notified when grocery pickup slots are available - thecodemonkey
https://curb.run
======
gorgoiler
This looks like a neat bit of tech but it doesn’t sit quite right with me. In
particular it doesn’t feel very fair to our fellow shoppers.

We wait in line for the ATM or the checkout or anything else because a
scrabble is unfair. Using a tool like this when others almost certainly are
not doesn’t really feel fair on those other people.

Having to check manually for a slot sucks, but so does waiting in line, and
that’s the lowest common denominator of behavior that still counts as fair
which we can all adhere to right now.

I get that the grocery companies should make the slot selection better. But
laying the blame on them feels a bit like the FAQ for those padlocks that stop
the airline passenger in front of you from being able to recline, where the
manufacturer tried to claim we are all in this together their product is just
part of a campaign for better airline seating for us all. It was no such
thing: it was kind of selfish.

In any other climate I’d happily be told to quit my social justice moralism,
but things seem quite serious at the moment, and I wouldn’t encourage using
this tool, but maybe I’m taking it too far.

~~~
mjwhansen
Ideally, the grocery stores or Instacart will add this functionality so it's
baked in to the pickup experience. I honestly wouldn't mind if they did that
and effectively forced us to shut down the app. This is a feature they should
already have! And there are a lot of examples of people making something
that's effectively a feature for an existing product, and that existing
product building it.

The selfish route would have been to keep this to ourselves. We talked through
the ethical implications of this and decided it was better to make it easier
for everyone rather than just us. If everyone uses it and is able to grocery
shop less often because they feel less food stress, things are improved.

We also purposefully don't support delivery slot since we think those should
be only for people who can't drive or don't have a car, and delivery is more
risky health-wise for delivery workers (who may have to visit 10+ different
stores in a day).

There are definitely equity issues though. We've considered adding a prompt
for people to donate to World Central Kitchen while waiting for a slot, for
example.

~~~
greeneggs
> If everyone uses it and is able to grocery shop less often because they feel
> less food stress, things are improved.

But that is exactly the issue that gorgoiler points out with the queue
example. Everybody _won 't_ use your website. Even if you are wildly
successful, a huge fraction of people won't use it. Therefore it is unfair. It
is like a digital line-cutting tool. The unfairness is the ethical problem.

------
kylecordes
The fundamental problem here is grocery stores and others needlessly limiting
when they make pickups available. Lots of people are sitting at home with
extreme schedule flexibility, and would be happy to choose a slot 10 days out
or whatever. Instead there is the silliness (and third-party app workarounds
like this) of only releasing slots much closer.

In other conversation I have seen the following explanation: those systems
were designed for a much different supply demand balance than we see today,
they just haven't had time to adjust things yet.

~~~
protonimitate
> those systems were designed for a much different supply demand balance than
> we see today, they just haven't had time to adjust things yet.

I feel like as much as this app is well intentioned, it will only make this
problem worse.

The bottle neck isn't on the technology side. It's on the operations side.

Extending the order window ahead would work, but they'd have to do a "check
in" before hand to actually pick your order, otherwise you wouldn't be able to
know if things will be in stock 10 days ahead of time.

~~~
nogabebop23
Yes - I bought a microphone that was in-stock for pick-up and a week later
sent a "hey, what's up?" email and got a "order ready for pickup" email an
hour later. There was no one in the store but they had 10x the number of
pickup orders to process. Its a operational capacity problem, not a scheduling
one.

------
thecodemonkey
Hi HN!

We realized that curbside pickups is a great compromise for everybody's health
and safety right now.

We built Curb Run because we found it very difficult to get a curbside pickup
slot at our local Wegmans. Willing to drive a bit further away to another
location, I hacked together a little script that would check for pickup slots
across multiple stores in a radius.

Fast forward, friends and family started hearing about this and asked if we
could help them too. We ended up turning this into a web app for everybody to
use -- and with many more stores and chains across the US.

We hope that this can help you as well!

~~~
ShakataGaNai
How do you assure that this tool isn't used by the lazy techno-elite to snatch
up all the delivery slots? Rather than say the older and technically less
literate, whom are probably more at risk and more in need of those delivery
slots?

Yes, I totally get the concept and could use it myself. But I'm also
reasonably young and healthy and would rather shop at the store and let the
"at risk" population use these grocery store features to be safe.

~~~
brokenmachine
You're welcome to not use it.

The whole reason this exists is because "these grocery store features" don't
exist.

Sites should be implementing their own waiting list, but that hasn't happened,
so here we are.

------
clairity
a number of commenters are relying on a misperception that we all need to
avoid everyone else as much as possible. that's incorrect, and leads to this
rush to overload curbside pickup options and crowd out people who particularly
need to avoid the risk of infection: those with co-morbidities.

what most of us need to do is avoid coughing and breathing into each others'
noses/mouths, and that's what the (better) guidelines are meant to prevent.
keeping distance doesn't need to be perfect, but best effort, as long as we
generally avoid standing face-to-face and talking (especially for prolonged
periods, closely, and/or loudly).

it's really fine to go to the grocery store if you don't live with someone
sick or immuno-compromised and can mostly avoid other people's spit in your
face.

------
gullyfur
Hey, this is cool! I tried to setup a curbside pickup for my elderly parents
with a local store through instacart, but after getting to the end I
discovered it was for next week. Couple thoughts:

1\. Could I just provide a zipcode instead of sharing my browser location?

2\. Could I check stores in aggregate? I'd rather discover which local
business has the MOST openings and then register an account there, rather than
getting to the end of the shopping experience and waiting.

Lastly, you have a typo "seend" in your third step.

~~~
thecodemonkey
Thanks a ton for the feedback! Hope this could be helpful for your parents.

1\. We decided to use geolocation because it removes one more form field. It
also makes it easier to expand to additional countries
([https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside/issues](https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside/issues))
we may reconsider in the future.

2\. Happy to explore adding additional ways to tackle the problem. For now, we
just have a simple map of stores to visualize coverage:
[https://curb.run/stores](https://curb.run/stores)

Fixed the typo. Thanks!

~~~
handedness
Please reconsider #1.

~~~
thomas
Agreed. Not opening up location.

------
lend000
After 5 days in a row of not being able to get a delivery slot for another
grocer, I used a similar tool. Even with the help of the tool polling the
website every minute, the slot filled before I was able to complete the order
the first few times. So at this point, it's clear that only coders are able to
get online grocery delivery from the store I use.

If there was a way to reserve delivery slots for the elderly and at-risk, that
would be great, but otherwise I see no problem with technically savvy people
having an advantage here, if the alternative is requiring people to do manual
polling and waste time. Those slots are going to go to somebody. Perhaps some
limit to one delivery per week per account to encourage people to order more
efficiently. Eventually, delivery capacity will ramp up to satisfy demand
regardless.

~~~
gamblor956
Some grocery stores have implemented anti bot mechanisms as a result of
earlier articles in the news about people using bots to claim delivery slots.
In a nutshell, more than x number of requests over an unknown period and you
get flagged (wherever you are using a bot or just an over eager human).

------
smoyer
I appreciate this effort ... when we thought things were going to get bad in
late February, we put about 3 months of food in our larder (like a root cellar
but reachable from the basement of our house). We've been ordering about every
2 weeks just to keep it replenished just in case things get significantly
worse. I've got three at risk people in my house so we can't really afford for
any of (the five of) us to catch this.

~~~
bdcravens
We did the same, but only about a month of food, and I ordered TP on Amazon
when I started seeing shortages in other countries. (I have a respiratory
condition)

------
floatingatoll
Has anyone started scalping pickup slots yet? “If you want toilet paper,
you’ll have to buy our pickup slot for $50”.

~~~
bdcravens
Our grocer (HEB in Texas) requires you to have paid for your order to book the
slot. My wife went to the store 2 days ago and was able to buy TP without any
issues, but until recently, even a pickup slot wouldn't guarantee you any of
the products you reserved.

------
c0nducktr
This is really great! I've sent it to a couple of my friends who are
immunocompromised and have been having trouble getting slots. Thank you for
making this!

~~~
thecodemonkey
Awesome! That’s great to hear. Hope this can help them out.

------
htunnicliff
Such a great idea!

Do you have any plans on open-sourcing this?

~~~
thecodemonkey
Yes indeed! Feel free to check it out here
[https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside](https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside)

------
wasnthere
Asks browser for location permission without an option for entering a zip code
or street address #FAIL

------
Fnoord
Is this US-specific or does it also work in other countries? I scanned the
landing page, could not find an answer to this question.

------
gamblor956
This is so unethical. I'm reaching out to the IT departments of some of these
stores to ask them to block your IP address.

------
seltzered_
Have you stopped to think about the ethical implications of this?

Could you put a warning to be mindful and only consider the service if you're
high-risk or in a situation where curbside is the only safe option?

I love the fact that my high-risk parents are using curbside pickup, but I
find myself better fitted to wear a mask and do the groceries myself during
off-peak hours. The last thing I think the world wants is (presumably younger)
people in tech taking up curbside slots before other people in the community.

~~~
dubcanada
I don't get your question.

Curb-side pickup is better as having a ton of people inside small grocery
stores considering all of them are not meant to handle large amounts of people
attempting to keep a set distance from each-other.

If curb-side pickup becomes more popular they would increase available slots
by allocating more resources. What is happening right now is you have one or
two managing curb-side and a ton inside managing everyone else.

What should happen is grocery stores should be closed except for employees and
your groceries should be delivered to you, or you pick them up curb side.

It would eliminate a whole realm of issues with people not following rules,
coughing on produce, not washing hands, moeny exchange, long lines, etc.

And if you implemented a strict health check on employees it would be way
easier for everyone.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
How does curbside pickup reduce the number of people in the stores?

Does it involve something other than swapping out customers picking their
groceries off the shelves for employees doing the same?

~~~
kelnos
It's not just about reducing the absolute number, it's about reducing the
number of possible interactions.

Let's say there are 20 employees in the store fulfilling orders, and they work
in two shifts during the day. So that's 40 people in the store that have the
potential to interact with each other (though it's really more like two
separate groups of 20). If they do the curbside dropoff in a safe manner (that
is, without physically interacting with the customer), then it's mostly those
40 people risking transmitting the disease to each other, and that's it.

If you instead allow 20 random people into the supermarket at a time (in
reality it's going to be more, which is even worse), and they spend an average
of 45 minutes in the store, and their entry and exist times are randomized
throughout the day, you have hundreds of people who could potentially interact
with and infect each other.

Employees will just naturally be much faster and efficient at gathering
groceries than customers will be. They know the layout of the store and where
everything is better, and they may also know that certain things are not
available, so they won't waste time looking for them. They can even multitask
and take care of more than one person's order at a time. They won't be
wandering around making impulse purchases, but will be sticking to a fixed
list of items the customer ordered. Checkout and bagging will go much faster.
This bit is optional, but they could even optimize things further by grouping
the most common items in one place, and not stocking shelves like they usually
do[0]. I imagine you can serve the same number of customers with much less
than half as many people in the store.

There's also the matter of discipline when it comes to distancing. I imagine
the supermarket employees are pushed hard to maintain social distancing with
each other while working. When I went to the supermarket a week ago, probably
a good 20% of the customers I encountered were failing at distancing, further
increasing risk.

[0] Consider that placement of items in a supermarket designed for customers
wandering around is intentionally not set up for efficiency! They want you to
walk through the entire store when making typical shopping run, in the hope
that you'll make a bunch of other impulse purchases.

------
allanitis
I got all excited when I saw the landing page graphic has groceries from an
Australian grocery store: Woolworths.

Alas...

~~~
mjwhansen
sorry :( does Woolworth's have curbside? Maybe we could add it!

edit: just checked and they're only doing it for people who are confirmed as
high risk (which is good!) Are there any grocery stores in AU that are doing
pickup open to the general public?

------
freepor
What I’ve found with Whole Foods delivery is that if you wait for a
notification you’ve lost the slot. I use a bot that plays a loud sound when a
slot is available and foregrounds the Firefox window. I then have to click the
checkout flow immediately. If I’m even a foot away from my machine when it
happens I lose the slot. I only get deliveries when I’m active on my PC.

~~~
baddox
Are you using Amazon Prime Now for Whole Foods delivery? In SF I wasn't able
to get a delivery window for several days (admittedly I wasn't checking more
than a couple of times per day), but on night on a whim I decided to check
right after midnight and was able to schedule a delivery for 2 days in the
future. Obviously a tiny sample size, but it appears they only ever schedule
for 2 days in advance, and they must open up new windows at midnight (and
perhaps at other scheduled times throughout the day).

Several days before that, I had a very annoying problem, which was that I
checked the Prime Now app and saw that there were delivery windows, so I added
all the items I wanted, and then there were no longer any windows. Also, every
time you refresh, it apparently just silently removes from your cart any items
which are no longer in stock, which means you better keep your shopping list
written down somewhere if you don't have it down by heart!

~~~
SheinhardtWigCo
It's incredibly frustrating. They encourage you to fill a cart with items that
you can't actually buy unless you get extremely lucky. Amazon Fresh has
exactly the same problem.

Imagine the collective amount of time wasted by this appalling UX that they
have zero incentive to fix.

~~~
freepor
The flip side is that in the UK where you book a slot and then fill up your
cart, there are a lot of people cancelling their carts at the last minute and
wasting delivery bandwidth. Of course that has its own fixes but basically
this system worked fine until a few weeks ago so everyone is playing catch up.

------
jhwhite
I opened a few issues on GitHub. Once I sign up, how do I stop notifications?

How do I add stores to my sub?

~~~
mjwhansen
You can stop notifications by replying DONE to the text message.

You can add stores by going to the website again and selecting different
stores. It resets for each monitor.

------
josefresco
Request: Peapod support.

~~~
mjwhansen
It's next on the list!

------
LatteLazy
Please please please make this work for the UK!

~~~
mjwhansen
We've got Tesco and Waitrose on the list to add! (Sainsbury's is out because
they're verifying against NHS lists of high risk people)

[https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside/issues](https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside/issues)

~~~
LatteLazy
Thank you!

------
andybak
US only

