
Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online - juokaz
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-27/has-online-grocery-shopping-peaked-most-still-prefer-in-store
======
elmerfud
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.

~~~
kerkeslager
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".

~~~
denimnerd42
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
What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not actually objective
quality.

~~~
asiachick
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
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.

~~~
Enginerrrd
>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.

~~~
perl4ever
You could compare it to rust instead.

------
monadic2
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.

~~~
siruncledrew
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(?).

~~~
wozniacki
Some places make you dread going to grocery stores. Even club stores that
require membership are bad. The experience has been nothing short of a
nightmare off late, even prior to these pandemic times.

Costco & Whole Food stores have especially declined in overall shopper
experience. Clueless store staff, shoddy inventory levels, incompetent
employees who cant be bothered to educate themselves on elementary details,
rude and crass shoppers, shoppers who dont return their carts to the corrals,
thinning variety of offerings, long lines at checkout, lack of adequate number
of self checkout terminals .... the list goes on.

I recall even 3-4 years things weren't so bad at these two very different
stores. Now they're almost uniformly bad.

I just wish they had large refrigerated silos outside the store in the parking
lot, where they could let you pick up your online orders like Walmart does.

~~~
ravenstine
Whole Foods stinks. I used to shop there a lot but, as the years went on,
their employees became more clueless and apathetic, the checkouts became very
slow, and the food from the hot bar got really bad. I mean like they add too
much salt and everything has no flavor, which is weird because they seem to
have no problem adding sugar to things, yet somehow their food kinda tastes
bad to me now. Maybe I've changed. IDK

Plus, the worst thing about Whole Foods stores is the layout. Whole Foods
stores tend to be laid out in such a way that there are shelves and bins that
are effectively obstacles you have to dodge, turning the shopping experience
into a human pechinko machine. I know they think this will get people to buy
more, but it makes me not want to come back because it's so unpleasant having
to try and serpentine around their bins of stuff and get stuck behind people
half the time.

Lousy store experience is one reason why I don't want to go grocery shopping
in general, and it's why I am much more likely to patronize a grocery store
with self checkouts.

Except for Sprouts, which I love despite their lack of self checkouts. It's
probably the only grocery store I genuinely like visiting.

~~~
wozniacki
I dont know how they pulled off the Wild Oats [1] [2] acquisition years ago -
or if things were just as bad back then, because I didn't shop at Whole Foods
in those years.

But I wish we had a greater array of upmarket or upmarket-adjacent stores that
carried fresh & nutritious offerings that you didnt have to label-check twice
before buying.

There must be something fundamentally wrong with grocery store margins in the
US ( or just in California ) that no one seems to be able to make a buck
consistently to keep standards high.

I hear great things about Wegmans & they've been forever in the mid-Atlantic
states. Its telling they havent chosen to set up shop in California despite
plentiful metro areas that could support such fare.

I never really thought very expensive California real estate markets would be
the places for future food deserts but we're nearly there.

[1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Oats_Markets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Oats_Markets)

[2]

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wholefoods-ftc/whole-
food...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wholefoods-ftc/whole-foods-ftc-
settle-on-wild-oats-merger-idUSTRE5253AL20090306)

~~~
weehoo
Check out Lunardi’s - assuming you are in the Bay Area. Wonderful staff
(Union), high quality produce, great bakery and butcher.

------
bane
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.

~~~
JoshTriplett
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
If I read all that, do I get my $60 back? No? Then I don't care. It's The
Wrong Way.

~~~
strictnein
Huh? No, you'd read that and then not order it in the first place.

~~~
somebrody
> 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

~~~
emiliobumachar
Nope. The OP was over-generalizing it as inherent to online grocery shopping,
the reply pointed out they just need to pick a different seller.

~~~
somebrody
They wanted items from Costco at a fair price. They didn't want items from a
"different seller", whatever that would mean. But, sure, pretend that
Instacart is doing a good job in the free market or whatever. Everyone else
knows that it isn't the right way to do it

------
Animats
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
>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.

~~~
ghaff
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.

~~~
Izkata
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
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.

------
kbos87
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.

~~~
fergie
Totally agree, even under COVID circumstances. If it wasnt for the weekly
shopping trip I would never have realised that for a lot of people life was
carrying on nearly as normal.

Online shopping feels too much like work (as in it feels like I am at work). I
find that wondering around grocery stores is a good way to reset my brain.

------
elicash
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
> 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
> 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
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.

~~~
elicash
Per the article, a ton of people find online grocery shopping confusing and
this is driving away a TON of potential business.

This is bad design.

------
charwalker
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.

------
bpyne
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.

------
linsomniac
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
>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.

------
MattGaiser
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.

~~~
kyteland
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.

------
analog31
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
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
Or enough people willing to do the actual delivering for the usual shit pay.

~~~
bpyne
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.

------
ideals
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
We just started ordering curbside pickup at the grocery store and there might
be a fee but it's nothing compared to delivery.

------
dx87
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.

------
hinkley
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.

------
code_duck
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. 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.

------
seanwilson
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?

------
dougmwne
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
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.

------
noetic_techy
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
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

~~~
noetic_techy
Good idea. That would be ideal.

------
noneeeed
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.

------
allengeorge
I like going to the grocery store.

~~~
redisman
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
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.

------
ping_pong
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.

~~~
code_duck
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 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.

------
supercanuck
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.

~~~
Spivak
There are margins in grocery? Walmart and Kroger put a pretty swift end to
that.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
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.

------
deeblering4
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.

------
floatingatoll
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
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
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.

------
koolba
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.

------
niftylettuce
If you're in NYC try out our service, OurHarvest.

[https://ourharvest.com/?coupon=HACKERNEWS](https://ourharvest.com/?coupon=HACKERNEWS)

Coupon code HACKERNEWS

------
pdx6
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?

~~~
ghaff
I have a local farm meat place and a farm stand a couple miles from me (the
latter of which is just getting started for the season). I definitely can't do
all my shopping at these places but I anticipate they'll be a lot of my non-
dairy perishables over the coming months. Much easier/quicker than dealing
with the supermarket.

------
makecheck
The really impressive thing about ordering groceries online is that they
actually provide _multiple ways_ to never receive what you asked for:

\- The web site shopping cart can just decide to remove things silently when
they go out of stock. (Dear Amazon: This is the stupidest imaginable thing you
could do, please stop it!)

\- The delivery person can miss a bag (and of course it’s the one containing
something you really wanted, like milk).

\- Someone can steal things off your porch.

\- The shopper can come up with something completely unreasonable as a
replacement; or they just misunderstand the order (e.g. pick a weird size or
different item). I once ordered a single tomato to have nice slices for
hamburgers, and I swear they found the _tiniest tomato I have ever seen_ (I
thought it was a grape).

Having said this, especially in a pandemic, it’s all been _pretty_ reliable
but still frustrating at times. A long way to go, yet.

------
gcheong
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.

------
camelNotation
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
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?

------
jhfdbkofdcho
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.

------
lifthearth
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
Related article (cannot vouch for quality):
[https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-
coronavirus-p...](https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-
pandemic/)

------
nemacol
"Allow substitutions" is the risky click of 2020.

~~~
SloopJon
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
I had an order that asked for "firm tofu" and ended up with mukimame. Which,
ya know... pretty close but still pretty far. :P

------
zajio1am
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.

------
frogpelt
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.

------
rasfincher
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.

------
alkonaut
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.

------
madrox
Our household does all our grocery shopping online, and I'm pretty convinced
people wouldn't rather visit a store. Rather, the online grocery shopping
experience is broken.

Online grocery shopping mimics other online shopping UX, and that simply isn't
how people shop in grocery stores. Grocery shopping is a communal thing. Kids
ask to add things to the cart (or just toss it in). There's a lot of aisle
browsing. You talk to the butcher to find out what's good. Right now, you buy
meat online the same way you buy a vacuum. No wonder people would rather go to
the store.

In our home, there's no way for me to browse the store without borrowing my
wife's login, and browsing the store kinda sucks. Instacart is notoriously
bad, and there are way better services out there (Good Eggs and Thrive are
probably the best), but there's still usually one or two things wrong with
every delivery. Having to talk to customer service every week gets exhausting.

Whoever cracks grocery UX will win.

------
beebmam
Speaking entirely from my own experience as an American: I've had no problem
at all with ordering food online, other than some shortages of certain
products. Quality of produce has been high, no mistakes, with quick and kind
service. I think I'll be sticking to ordering online for the foreseeable
future

------
jimmaswell
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.

------
sjg007
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.

------
linsomniac
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.

------
rglover
Of course. Sometimes the convenience of ordering is great, but good lord, I
don't want to live in the dystopian hell where you never go to the store. It's
fun to joke with people. Flirt with the cashier. Bump into a friend
unexpectedly. _Human stuff_.

------
yalogin
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
Instacart's price gouging is a bit of a special case (compared to many
supermarkets that do curbside or delivery)

------
dmode
I only go to store because it costs $15 in fees to order $40 of groceries/food

------
knowaveragejoe
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.

------
gnicholas
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.

------
chooseaname
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?

------
whyenot
I did the Whole Foods delivery through Amazon a couple of times, and it was
fine. The only problem was that it became almost impossible to get a delivery
window. Eventually, I just gave up on it. What I have been doing more recently
is ordering a box of fruit and produce (+ cheese, other stuff) from the Milk
Pail drive-thru in Mountain View and then every couple of weeks I go to a
grocery store and buy whatever else I need. I've only been to a grocer store
twice in 8+ weeks of shutdown. That's a pretty huge change for me -- I used to
go several times a week.

------
bpodgursky
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
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.

~~~
ping_pong
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
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.

------
drwiggly
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.

------
Ididntdothis
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.

------
makerofspoons
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
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
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.

------
gwbas1c
I tried a local restaurant produce delivery service. The quality of the food
was good and the prices were fine...

But the problem was I had to place the order over the phone, which was
excruciatingly slow!

Even though I go shopping with a list, I often make a lot of impulse buys
which is just harder when ordering groceries for delivery.

I like going to the store in person better. The grocery store is very close to
my house and well stocked, compared to all the various niche items I get on
Amazon.

------
gniv
I just realized that the "UI" presented by the supermarket shelves as you walk
by them is very dense and yet we are good at identifying things quickly.

Short of a full VR experience, I haven't seen a similar UI on a computer.

My problem with shopping for groceries online is that there is no easy way to
browse and discover new things. Especially nowadays when some favorites are
out of stock I keep finding new things in store that I like.

------
marcinzm
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
Came here to say how good freshdirect is. Been a happy customer since 2008 if
not longer.

~~~
marcinzm
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.

------
yellowapple
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).

------
TurbineSeaplane
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.

------
wffurr
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).

------
Noos
I think the real issue is probably the store hires all of one or two people to
deliver food, who make really low wages and have to do a lot of orders.

You guys are expecting concierge level service from minimum wage people.
Grocery stores can really only do the minimum possible usually, even with the
fees

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/wsonA](https://archive.md/wsonA)

------
moogly
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.

------
ChuckMcM
Somewhere the former CEO of Webvan[1] is rolling around laughing on the floor.

[1] [https://groundfloorpartners.com/lessons-from-
webvan/](https://groundfloorpartners.com/lessons-from-webvan/)

------
ashtonkem
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.

------
lowwave
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!

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ramoz
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.

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thrower123
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.

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badrabbit
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!!

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benibela
I would buy it online, if it were not more expensive

In the store I spend between 10 to 20€/week for food. The online shops have an
almost 5€ shipping fee. That is a 25% food expense increase, at best

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eries
A lot of the issues being reported in this thread are thoroughly solved by
Good Eggs. They’ve been much better for us during the pandemic, although
obviously under heavy load

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ryanmarsh
Instacart sucks therefore Americans prefer to shop for themselves? I think
not.

We love Shipt. They've solved the stated problems. Shame they don't get more
attention.

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ummonk
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.

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tanilama
Well...trying to buy strawberries from online store.

I ordered multiple times from PrimeNow, and 50% of chance, the strawberries
have already gone bad.

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vmchale
I feel like with various things being restricted, people were desperate for
that social outlet at the beginning of lockdown.

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linsomniac
I wonder if stores are finding that they have lower shoplifting now that their
staff are walking purchases out to cars.

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unemphysbro
As much as I hate grocery shopping. I like having control over the entire
process.

Maybe, I'm neurotic?

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sesuximo
Americans have nothing else to do

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trynewideas
Great timing, just had an online grocery order botched for the fourth straight
time.

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inamberclad
Much harder to discover new foods via a computer screen.

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RaRaMama
I like to pick my own avocado.

~~~
sigjuice
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.

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trophycase
Duh?

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sabujp
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.

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somebrody
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.

