
Wal-Mart Plans to Test Grocery Delivery Through Uber, Lyft - petethomas
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-03/wal-mart-to-start-testing-grocery-delivery-through-uber-lyft
======
TorKlingberg
UK supermarkets are a bit ahead of the curve here. All the large ones have a
home delivery service, including Walmart-owned ASDA. It's quite cheap too:
£1-6 if you buy £40, for various time slots. They all use their own vehicles
and staff, so I suppose Wal-Mart can reduce the risk by using Uber/Lyft. I
wonder though, does this mean no active cooling on the way? Can you trust that
the ice cream is still frozen when it arrives?

I have found home delivery very useful, especially after having a baby. I
don't enjoy going to a supermarket after work on weekdays, but receiving a
delivery is easy and means the weekend is free. The main psychological barrier
is that it takes surprisingly long to choose groceries online, almost as long
as walking around the store. They try to make it easier by suggesting things
you usually order, but it's still something you have set aside time for.

~~~
chrischen
Safeway in the US has home delivery from their own trucks.

~~~
biftek
The grocery stores I grew up going to in CO had delivery too, I think it was
just primarily targeted at the elderly and disabled.

~~~
blackaspen
King Soopers (Kroger) has it in Colorado, as do a few local ones...That said,
I don't know anyone that uses it.

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martin-adams
Justin King (former CEO of Sainsburys in the UK) said that their data showed
that people start ordering groceries for home delivery is when they start a
family.

After a few weeks, when (usually) the mother of the new baby is willing to
venture out, she will visit the grocery store to buy extra things.

Turns out that the spending level of online groceries doesn't drop, but the
spending level of ad-hoc in-store purchases does, resulting in an overall
increase in spending.

This is true for my family. The UK also has seen an increase of convenience
stores which carry a 5% price premium. People like to by a little often, than
to buy a lot every week.

The behaviour of grocery shopping has shifted a lot in the past 5 years in the
UK.

Edit: Spelling and clarity

~~~
mankyd
> people start ordering groceries for home delivery is when they start a
> family.

This certainly matches our experience. We've been using Google Express a ton
to get the regular necessities that come with having children: diapers,
cheerios, food for lunches, etc.

We have a grocery store within walking distance that we still visit regularly
for produce, perishables, and the odd ingredients that dinner sometimes
requires.

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k-mcgrady
I'm always surprised grocery delivery is still a big deal in the US. All the
major supermarkets in the UK do home delivery, next day, for a £3-5 delivery
fee. You can go the site, fill your basket, and checkout. You also get a 1-2
hour delivery slot so you don't have to wait at home all day. We also have
Amazon Prime Now doing grocery delivery within 1 hour in some cities. I can
see how it would be a problem in some less densely populated areas in the US
but how it's not done in all cities is beyond me. Any one know?

~~~
mgr86
A fair amount of US grocery stores do as well. Our local grocery store has a
pick up option as well as a delivery. Another a few miles down the road near a
restaurant we enjoy also has a (free) place for us to charge our car why we
shop.

I am hesitant to adopt them. I guess we are finicky about how we shop. Fearful
of the bad head of lettuce or banana or what have you. Or how will we know
they didn't chose the yogurt that expires in two days over the one that has
two weeks?

What my girlfriend and I do is use AnyList (there are multiple other apps, but
we are liking this one). And start at opposite ends of the store. Checking off
the list real time as we shop.

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matthewmacleod
_I am hesitant to adopt them. I guess we are finicky about how we shop.
Fearful of the bad head of lettuce or banana or what have you. Or how will we
know they didn 't chose the yogurt that expires in two days over the one that
has two weeks?_

There are ways around this though. Using Ocado in the UK, they will specify
minimum lifetimes for all of the products you order and display them
prominently (for example, in the iPhone app:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/3d0awqydeqq386v/2016-06-03%2019.58...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3d0awqydeqq386v/2016-06-03%2019.58.21.png?dl=0))

I'm pretty sure they'll also refund anything you aren't happy with, which
helps to keep quality high.

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alagappanr
Strangely, the small merchants in India are doing a great job when it comes to
door delivery of groceries.

Even over 15-20 years back, my mom used to get door delivery of the month's
groceries by just making a phone call. One of the reason's for the success of
this model was that most customers did not have a car to transport all of
their groceries and phone-order was the easiest option available to them. (I'm
talking about the late 90s when Internet was not that common).

Of course, it works on the assumption that the customer exactly knows what
they want - rather than making them buying arbitrary items at the store.

Most of the merchants circulate their menu/deals along with newspapers and
have a phone number that customers can reach them at. All you do is decide on
what you want to order and then call the merchant at the given number. They
deliver all the items at your house within a couple of hours. It uses the idea
of "Cash on Delivery" i.e., you make your payment in-person to the delivery
person. This method has been in practice for so many years that customers are
quite used to the entire process and the merchants make sure that the delivery
is processed as comfortably as possible.

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11thEarlOfMar
Isn't this a bit going the wrong way somehow?

Growing up, mom went grocery shopping once every 2 weeks. We'd load up 2 or 3
shopping carts that filled 8 or 10 grocery bags.

One auto trip every 2 weeks for groceries.

With all the delivery services for restaurants, groceries, and more and more
sundries, the trips to my house are made for less and less 'stuff' per trip.
More trips per household obviously means more gasoline burned.

With Amazon or FedEx, at least it's a truck on a route with several dozen
deliveries to make. But this Uber/Lyft scheme looks to likely be 1, maybe 2,
deliveries per trip.

~~~
agmcleod
How did you guys keep vegetables fresh for 2 weeks? That's usually why i go a
couple times a week. Usually buy a pack of meat to have for a few nights of
dinner, vegetables to use as well. Then get more once it's used up.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
There was a time when canned and frozen vegetables were more common than
fresh. I can't eat them today, but that's what we ate growing up.

~~~
ams6110
Same. Most veggies we either grew in the backyard garden or were frozen from
the store. People don't remember that the vast fresh produce sections you see
at most supermarkets today are relatively new. Back then you might have
lettuce, carrots, potatoes, and maybe a few other things available fresh and
the quality was not always great.

~~~
gbin
I still remember this from 1999-2000 in the Silicon Valley...I was shocked,
fresh products were hard to find and very expensive. In France it never
disappeared, we always had fresh sections in supermarkets on top of fresh
market at walking distance twice a week.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
It is possibly even more shocking today: The best organic produce can be found
at Costco. I've bought blackberries there the size of my thumb, and they
tasted like a dessert wine. Never had anything like it, let alone from Costco.

~~~
qmr
"Organic" is a marketing buzzword.

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lujim
This is going to take a bit of magic to pull off. Groceries are very low
margin items and people just opt for pre-made restaurant food when we are
feeling lazy. When I'm motivated enough to prepare my own food I'm motivated
enough to go to the grocery store. This is the domain of driver-less delivery
vehicles of whatever kind.

~~~
rimantas
There are also moms (and sometimes dads) at home with a small kids. And they
may be highly motivated to avoid journey to a grocery store.

~~~
fattylite
I understand what you meant, but a trip to the grocery store can also be a
perfect way to get their energy out if the kids are particularly bananas that
day. So, some parents relish that trip.

~~~
dougk16
Exactly. For my toddlers I also view it as training in some level of obedience
(not running to the other side of the store), social interaction, dealing with
disappointment (no you can't have the batman matchbox car set), learning about
money (goes in hand with the disappointment factor!), helping me to pick out
food, learning what stuff is called, a little hide and seek fun within the
obedience bounds...it's like a little slice of life learning all in one place.

Overall it is a _challenge_ for a parent though, so I'm not convinced that
many won't just stay at home and order food from an app with the kids watching
TV.

~~~
jeremya
This. In my parenting life, I feel there are so many decision where you have
to choose between optimizing the short term or the long term. I tend to favor
the long term and my philosophy is roughly: the difficult path becomes easier
and the easy path becomes more difficult.

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bluedino
I would pay a small premium for a 'pick up at store' service like I can at
some retailers. Buy the item online, go to the store, go to the customer
service counter and pickup the your purchases.

Imagine just going to the grocery store drive-through and picking up your
groceries that you've chosen beforehand.

~~~
dvcc
I am not sure where you live but this is pretty common in the north east
(ShopRite etc.). To me though, I feel like there are misaligned incentives
when employees pick food vs. the customer picks the food. Why should the
employee care if the bread is going bad tomorrow instead of a week? The added
time-savings just don't offset that concern for me.

~~~
ghaff
I can't say that concerns with expiration dates are high on my list of issues
when I'm grocery shopping. That said, if I'm going to order online anyway, I'm
not sure why I wouldn't just have it delivered--maybe for a few bucks more--
than driving to the store. Maybe if I'm not very mobile but can still drive,
but then I still need to unload the car. I don't really understand the use
case.

~~~
icebraining
Sometimes you can't be sure when you'll be at home to receive them.

~~~
ghaff
There's still a time window for pickup though. So you have to schedule in any
case.

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drglitch
Call me old fashioned but I still would trust UPS/FedEx more with my packages
- as opposed to contracted amateurs. Granted, last mile delivery is always a
challenge...

How long until you can get a freight van through uber's subprime leasing
program?

~~~
lujim
Agreed, but to be fair that was how I felt about having Uber driving me around
when I first heard about it a few years ago.

~~~
pigeons
And that's why I don't use Uber, their drivers are much less professional
(smoking, loud music, don't know the area, poor driving skills) than taxi
drivers.

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jokoon
Planning in advance could really save a lot of gas, time and money if
customers decided to shop online more. The last mile seems like a tough
headache in term of logistics, but I'm sure there are many people who would
love to not go shopping if it was convenient enough.

Although I don't think it will viable at first, so I doubt that market will
really grow, since the economies of scale only happen if enough people shop
online in a small region. Ultimately companies like Walmart still want
customers to roam in their supermarkets to buy things they did intend to, as a
virtual store and online ads seems less appealing than a customer just
wandering in an aisle and discovering an article.

~~~
mtgx
It would also reduce traffic in cities.

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nebulous1
I'm torn between wanting somebody to compete with Amazon and it being Walmart

~~~
brudgers
While I was caught up in the anti-Walmart meme [and I'm using "meme"
dismissively] for many years, today Walmart provides jobs in my community and
those jobs appear to be stable with regular shifts because I often see the
same cashiers at the same times one year to the next. I'll add that Walmart
also generates local sales and income tax revenue [and sometimes property tax]
that helps make schools and roads and fire trucks possible.

That's not to say either Amazon or Walmart is moral. It's more that because
Walmart has a greater dependency on the commons around me and I believe its
interests and mine are less orthogonal.

~~~
tshtf
Sure, Walmart provides jobs in your community... But they cost state and
federal taxpayers in a significant way.

Walmart's business model depends on state and federal government assistance to
their low-paid workers:

[http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-high-public-cost-of-
low-...](http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-high-public-cost-of-low-wages/)

It is true that Walmart brings in local revenues through sales and property
taxes, however this is more than offset by the assistance state and federal
governments have to provide to low-wage Walmart workers:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/15/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/15/we-
are-spending-153-billion-a-year-to-subsidize-mcdonalds-and-walmarts-low-wage-
workers/)

~~~
rsheridan6
Any unskilled job is going to have a low enough pay rate that many of the
employees will qualify for public assistance. This goes for Walmart, Target,
and the mom and pop shops Walmart replaced. If Walmart went out of business
tomorrow, these people would still be on public assistance. That's today's
economy.

~~~
drivers99
This article[1] though on a biased (in that they have a point of view) site,
has links to some state data, so it's convenient to link to it. It's also
specific to medicaid benefits.

> Of the 50 companies with the most employees on Medicaid in Massachusetts,
> almost half are retail and restaurant chains. The list includes CVS, Home
> Depot, May Department Stores, Sears, Kohl’s, Walgreen, Lowe’s, and Best Buy.

> Similar data was recently released by Wisconsin, Missouri, and New Jersey.
> Topping all three states’ lists are many of the same retailers, including
> Walmart, Target, Dollar General, and Home Depot, as well as restaurant
> chains such as Olive Garden and Red Lobster.

It doesn't seem exactly fair to do it based on total number of employees
though. What about percentage of employees? Looking at the Missouri (state
health care) data, Walmart is at about double the rate as Target, it has:

    
    
        Walmart work force: 43,281  
        Walmart MHN Enrolled employees (E): 2403  
        Walmart MHN Enrolled family members (N): 3633  
        Walmart total employees (E+N): 6036  
        Walmart Percentage of Missouri Workforce Enrolled(E) or Responsible for Enrollee (N) 13.95%
    
        Target work force: 7,580
        Target MHN Enrolled employees (E): 282
        Target MHN Enrolled family members (N): 317
        Target total employees (E+N): 599
        Target Percentage of Missouri Workforce Enrolled(E) or Responsible for Enrollee (N) 7.9%
    

Actually the rest of the data[2] is interesting (kind of old; 2011), and too
much to summarize here, but there are a lot of worse companies than both of
those, percentage-wise. For example, Dollar General is at 42.24%.

[1] [https://ilsr.org/chains-walmart-foods-free-ride-taxpayers-
ex...](https://ilsr.org/chains-walmart-foods-free-ride-taxpayers-expense-
responsible-small-businesses/) [2]
[https://dss.mo.gov/mhd/general/pdf/2011-employer-match-
repor...](https://dss.mo.gov/mhd/general/pdf/2011-employer-match-report.pdf)

~~~
rsheridan6
Walmart recently (this year) changed their pay structure so that nobody will
make less than $11/hour, which is good for jobs that don't even require high
school or the ability to speak English, so data from 2011 is outdated.

But being paid $11/hour still means that at the workers with dependent
children will still be on Medicai and other public programs.

Very few unskilled jobs pay enough that a single mom is not going to qualify
for benefits, so these stats probably reflect more than anything who the
company hires or retains. If they hire lots of single moms, they will be lots
of employees collecting benefits. If they hire more men, older people or
younger people, they will not.

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nxzero
Core issue long-term is that if Amazon doesn't own the "last mile" it will be
at the mercy of those that do; clearly, Jeff knows this, though unclear how
he's going to address this long-term.

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ChuckMcM
Once again I wonder about the notion of an "independent contractor" class of
worker, one where they save up and buy the standard "util-i-car" a vehicle
which has a driving/motive unit, and attachable rear units, delivery pod,
cargo pod, livery (tax) pod, transport (ambulance) pod, Etc. Along with a
supply of lenders/repairs/resellers who lend you the money for your first
utili-car, trade you used car or pod, repair your car/pod, sell new pods etc.

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kilroy123
I've used Safeway's home delivery service before. Wal-mart's as well. The
whole, get your groceries delivered, it isn't such a great experience to be
honest.

First of all, pretty much every single time, I was missing items!

Secondly, navigating the online store is a horrible experience. Finding
things, thinking of what you need. The whole thing stinks.

The experience of walking down an isle and picking out what you need, is
strangely more efficient.

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Tistel
This could be huge if they can keep the prices near Walmart levels. This could
be a way to get around the negative stigma of shopping at Walmart amongst the
hipster / bourgeois / middle class. If they pull this off it will put real
pressure on the other grocery providers. On the downside, grocery delivery
services have been tried many times in the past 15 years.

~~~
ghaff
Eh. I can't say I've done formal comparison shopping but Walmart groceries
don't strike me as being systematically a lot cheaper than other grocery
chains on an, ahem, apples to apples basis. Personally, given other options,
I'm not sure why I would use Walmart for grocery delivery given that I'd be
paying for delivery in some form and their selection and, often, quality are
inferior to other stores.

~~~
dsl
Have a look at Walmart SavingsCatcher. As you walk out of the store, you snap
a QR code on your receipt. They check every other store in your area for the
stuff you bought and refund the difference on a gift card if they weren't the
cheapest.

I've used it a few times with grocery delivery.

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mathattack
It seems like Uber and Lyft are currently doing deals like this as big special
one-offs. At what point do real world services like this become plug and play
via APIs?

~~~
venomsnake
When we remove the pesky wetware

~~~
mathattack
Can't you see a world where Lyft or Uber offers themselves as a platform?

"You put in the weight and dimensions of the object to be transported, and
we'll give you pricing and an ETA for pickup and delivery"

People could then choose to do the delivery similar to how they choose to pick
people up. Perhaps there's a premium (similar to surge pricing?) based on
size.

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mmilano
I can't say I'd want my family's food traveling in a car used to haul the
public around when it's not delivering food.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Why not?

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Cherian_Abraham
Would be interesting to know how and who shoulders the liability here?

~~~
maxerickson
Walmart has all the reputation risk.

Which whatever anyone wants to say about Walmart's reputation, it's pointless
to offer the service if they let it suck.

