
Why Do Millennials Hate Groceries? - prostoalex
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/millennials-groceries/506180/?utm_source=quartzfb&amp;single_page=true
======
nkrisc
As a millennial myself, my beef isn't with groceries, it's with the once-a-
week, huge shopping trip. I much prefer to make a few small trips a week if
it's on my commute. I used to live near a small, independent grocery and would
usually stop in on my walk home from the train and grab stuff to cook that
night.

~~~
Cerium
I love both! I like stopping by small independent grocery stores, but I also
buy what I can at Costco. My wife and I love to go to Costco and walk around.
We set limits on what we will buy and have general rules such as no buying
more of any category until we eat what we have. We spent about 600 per month
at Costco, 150-200 at other grocery stores, and 150-200 eating out.

~~~
goda90
Whoa, where do you live that you're spending $1000 a month on food for two?

I love Costco too, but our apartment is too small for storing lots of bulk
food items. My wife and I dream of having a bigger kitchen, pantry, and chest
freezer someday.

~~~
soulnothing
I find it really easy to hit that price point.

When I was single I was averaging about 250 -> 350 a month. But I offset this
by buying chicken in bulk at 40LB increments and that usually lasted me
several months.

For two right now I'm average about 700 to 800 a month. I have a number of
food allergies so ingredients or restrictive. The other half is as close to
organic as possible.

I'd say the biggest contribution to the price is moving off farm sourcing. I
don't have the time right now to process 40lb of chicken, or several cases of
produce.

------
nostrademons
Looking at the data presented in the article - it seems to correlate pretty
well with economic recessions. I think that when people are flush with cash,
they tend to eat out, while when they lose their jobs and are sitting at home,
they economize at the cost of personal inconvenience. This is neither
structural nor generational - there were dips for all age groups during the
'91, '00, and '07-11 recessions, the dips were just larger for younger workers
(who tend to be more exposed to economic fluctuations, since they enter the
job market with no work history or network, and the onus is on them to
convince someone they're worth paying for).

Certainly there were moments when I worked at Google that I was like "Why do I
bother going to the supermarket, when I get 10 meals/week at work and can
easily Instacart the rest?", and it was really just force of habit that kept
me shopping. But now that I'm doing a startup, I appreciate having habits that
keep my burn rate low - my in-laws recently looked at their food budget and
realized that "Oh, the reason we're not saving any money is because we eat out
every day."

------
djtriptych
Well, I'm a millenial. Without even reading the article, I'm wondering who in
the hell chooses to drive, park, walk half a mile inside a flourescently-lit
building, stand in line, pay, load a car, drive back to a house, and unbag
groceries when all of that can be avoided by using a computer.

A better question is why we still have food warehouses that would be better
operated by robots than people.

As a high-earning hyper-urban techy millenial (Brooklynite / software
engineer) who doesn't particularly enjoy cooking, I'm wondering where the
value proposition for groceries is when I can order from a huge variety of
nearby restaurants, who will deliver hot, cooked food to my door every night
for about $20/meal.

Considering there tends to be zero food waste with this option, I'm not sure
I'm saving money by shopping for food, especially when I assign a value to my
free time, which I like to estimate at half my hourly rate in calculations
like this.

~~~
Cerium
You definitely save money eating at home once you get good at it. If you live
with someone else it is also a great social opportunity. These days I cook and
eat with my wife, but before I met her I cooked with my roommates.

One roommate now will only eat with us if we add up the cost of ingredients
and charge him fairly. Many of our dinners cost only a couple dollars.

Pasta with marinara sauce and dinner rolls: 1.33 / pound pasta, 1.80 jar of
sauce, rolls 0.13 each. Serves 3-4 people for $5. 15 minutes (limited by water
heating).

Tacos with guacamole: $3 pre-made guacamole, tortillas 0.5 / 12 pieces, beans
1.20 / can, salsa $2 / half bottle, tofu 1.5 / block, cilantro 1 / bundle.
rice ~$1. Serves 3-4 people for $10. 20 minutes (lots of tasks, have to cook
tortillas).

I won't break it down, but I can do a nice sushi dinner: various rolls, cold
tofu, inari, miso soup, for 3-4 people for about $15. 45 minutes (lots of
tasks).

In any case I can feed three adults for about ten dollars and 2/3 of an hour
of my time. Usually there are enough left-overs to make a nice lunch for
myself.

I enjoy eating out, and do so about once a week. Before I got married I ate
out a lot. I would spend about $900 per month just for myself. Now I make an
effort to cook dinner 6 days a week and spend a total of about 800 per month
on food for both of us.

~~~
nilkn
When I see posts like this the prices often feel like they're chosen to be the
best possible that could be achieved.

For instance, pre-made guacamole, if it's actually made entirely from real
avocados, is more like $6 where I'm at if you want enough to feed 4 people
multiple tacos each -- so twice the price you're quoting here.

~~~
Cerium
Oh, you are right, I did the math wrong. I pay $11 for a three pack of 1 pound
guacamole boxes. That's closer to $4 each. I'm in California which has a lot
of Avocados. In the summer I can reliably purchase large Avocados for 4 for $5
at local markets. When I can get those I use three to make guacamole.

My general food purchasing scheme is to attempt to only purchase the foods I
can get at the best prices. If I am shopping and see a 10 pound bag of organic
carrots for less than $5 I will buy it and have lots of carrots that week. For
example: carrot salad, egg-rolls (carrot filling freezes well), soup, or stir-
fry.

I can always buy tortillas for about 3-4 dollars for at least 6 dozen. I
freeze them into one dozen stacks and defrost in the microwave until they can
be teased apart and finished on a pan.

Some of the best deals I get are at Whole Foods. They often have very good
sales on frozen foods. Otherwise I get foods at Costco, a local family market,
and Trader Joe's. In the summer I occasionally go to a flea market to get
specialty items and seasonal produce.

------
munificent
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that this article may
completely misinterpret its own statistics. It keeps talking about _shoppers_
, but the unit in all of the charts is _dollars_.

It claims that more _people_ are eating out. But it may be that as income
disparity increases, restaurant prices go up for the people who can afford to
eat out. That would lead to an increased amount of _money_ going into
restaurants, even though the same number or even fewer _people_ are eating
out.

------
personlurking
Bit of a summary, from the article:

"So what’s the real story here? Yes, Millennials are shifting their spending
toward restaurants and bars and away from grocers. But it’s not an
unprecedented shift. They’re simply returning to their mid-aughts levels of
restaurant spending."

~~~
mordocai
This was in the comment for a bit but is gone again, but the rest of the
summary would be that this isn't just Millennials. Gen Xers and their parents
are also spending more at restaurants/bars

~~~
personlurking
Sorry, I put it in for a second but some of it was repetitive (minus the part
you mention, of course). Here's what was also in my comment:

"The big story here is not that young people are uniquely turning away from
groceries. Rather, the story is a structural shift toward eating out at
restaurants, among Millennials and their parents (and perhaps even their
grandparents)."

------
maxerickson
It's bizarre to treat shopping on the grocery side of a super Walmart as
different than shopping in a medium or larger sized grocery store. It's the
same selection and the same experience (unless you need something that the
Walmart stocks in addition to the groceries, in which case it is moderately
more convenient).

------
xenihn
I don't know about you guys, but I love grocery shopping. Going to Ralphs and
Costco is almost always an enjoyable experience for me (usually only hampered
by dealing with parking). I believe you can use Google's delivery service to
order from the latter, but I haven't tried it yet.

~~~
virmundi
If I had a Ralph's it would be. Mostly shop at Walmart for canned goods or
slower to perish items. Publix is run down, and old fashioned in that it lacks
sunlight aside from the front window. Same for Winndixie.

------
ghaff
>But today’s shoppers are springing for options in a market that supermarkets
once monopolized. Modern shoppers divide their shopping among superstores like
Walmart, supermarkets like Giant, specialty shops for bread and coffee, and
online shopping for all of the above.

I suppose that technically-speaking a Walmart (or Target) is not a
"supermarket." But that seems like a distinction without a difference in terms
of making statements about how a given demographic is moving away from grocery
shopping.

~~~
douche
Most rural WalMart super-centers have a full supermarket built into them.

~~~
ghaff
That was my point. (And Walmart Superstores are increasingly in a wide range
of suburban locations as well.)

ADDED: I don't like doing grocery shopping at Walmart in general because of
generally sub-par meat, bakery, and produce. But I still use one to pick up
packaged groceries simply because it's a bit closer than my nearest regular
supermarket.

~~~
douche
Yeah, they are pretty sub-par, and they tend to be a zoo because everybody and
their mother is there buying something - with about three of the sixteen cash
registers manned.

------
palakchokshi
This is a thought experiment on my end:

What if there was a mobile(not cellphone) grocer that frequented locations
where people might consider buying from the grocer?

A grocer truck (like a food truck) could frequent train station parking lots
as designated times allowing commuters to shop a couple of days' groceries. A
grocer truck could frequent central locations in a neighborhood at designated
times to allow residents to walk up to the truck to purchase groceries.

Upsides:

grocery when you need it without trips to the supermarkets

purchase less but more often than a once a week trip.

convenient location and timing to do grocery shopping

no parking hassles if the model is a walk up to purchase groceries.

downsides: limited choice (can be mitigated if grocer has a mobile app)

limited supply (again if there is an app and you can preorder the items are
kept aside for you for a limited time before being sold) Perishable items
cannot be set aside indefinitely.

limited pick up options (grocer can field location requests and can add a
location if there is enough demand for it)

All this might have already been tried but I don't know of it. What other
downsides do you see apart from the fact that some people would rather order
from a restaurant than cook? This would not be for those people who don't want
to cook.

~~~
Symbiote
Everything you describe is how this works in much of the world, except remove
the wheels.

The station near my work has three "supermarkets" within 50m of the entrance,
catering to three different price brackets. There's nowhere to park, they sell
very little other than food[1], and they only provide baskets -- they don't
expect people to buy more than they can fit on a bicycle. They're open every
day, from 7-22.

[1] They sell detergents and so on, but you can't buy a TV or a pair of jeans,
or a huge box of anything.

~~~
palakchokshi
That's good to know. In my birth country growing up I remember my mom used to
buy a couple of days' vegetables from a roaming vegetable vendor. The
vegetables were fresh and available at the doorstep in the morning before
lunch preparation began. Since we were vegetarians we didn't see or know if
there were meat vendors that did this too but my guess is there weren't since
these "mobile" vendors didn't have refrigeration on their push carts.

------
ilaksh
They are not counting Walmart as a grocery store. I buy food at Walmart
because it has everything else, is the cheapest and closest.

If I was less broke I would go out more and maybe splurge at Target sometimes,
and buy more stuff on Amazon so I don't have to carry it. But the
'neighborhood' Walmart has produce so-- I think actually they should count
Walmart and Target as grocery stores.

~~~
sailfast
I think they are purposely segmenting the population here to show how typical
supermarkets (read: Food only) are fading precisely because other retailers
(walmart, etc) have gotten into the food game. Walmart isn't a supermarket
because it's got a lot more than food. Its goods are a superset of your
typical Giant, Kroger, Ralph's, etc. This is also likely a reason you see
Kroger start to expand into "Super stores" that have one-stop shopping for a
lot of similar things.

------
soulnothing
For me I don't mind grocery shopping. When I was in the city proper, it was on
the way too or from work. I would do delivery some time. But I love too cook
and get hands on ingredients. After I moved thought, my diet has tanked due to
difficulty in getting food.

Exceptions are dried spices, household goods, and oils which I buy in bulk. I
did hate the time in line, effort etc. But also allowed me to check out for a
bit.

Now I dread it, and do most of my orders through FreshDirect. I'm sort of in a
food desert. There are two grocery stores two miles away from me. There are
buses that run every 1.5 hours, and take 40 minutes to get there.

I hate it because I generally have to walk. It burns about 2 hours for me. I
have to carry everything back in a backpack. Uber/Lyft is 30$ per trip. It's a
bigger problem for impromptu meals. Or oh I need this but forgot about it.

The other night I wanted a salmon filet over a salad. I went to the store all
the ingredients together was 22$. The pub next store has a salmon entree for
15$. Sometimes the value propositions are skewed.

~~~
soulnothing
A few more thoughts came to mind.

Firstly when I was in the city, I didn't track my expenditure but would say I
was spending more. This was in part because of a smaller kitchen and fridge.
Because of the smaller kitchen there was less space to get items in bulk. The
fridge didn't allow much meal prep. I'm the type to usually devote one day to
cooking out of the week. But at the same time, I cooked more often due to
convenience.

Secondly I feel like food prices are going up. My diet was very simple meat,
produce, yogurt, protein powder. Those prices have stayed relatively flat. But
when I started shopping for my girlfriend. It seemed like bread, soda, chips,
etc. had gone up. I almost had sticker shock, when I went to get soda.

I'm also curious about the ramifications of living space. The millenial is
often slated to be living in more urban areas. Where the kitchens often are
not the best. I'm not asking for a Viking or Subzero range, but less than 10
minutes to boil water would be nice.

My apartment in the city had a Kenmore induction range. A piece of chicken on
that took about 6 minutes to cook. My kenmore gas range at my house took 2
minutes to cook chicken. The cooking process was much quicker.

A number of my friends also don't know how to really cook. I'm not trying to
be mean, but we're also seeing a proliferation of meal in a box busineses.
That ship recipes to you. Is it ease of delivery, or ease of preparation? It
was pretty much jumping into the deep end when I learned about my food
allergies. Learning how to really cook, then figuring out how to substitute
items.

Taking this back a step. I grew up with tv dinners, around the weeknight
sitcom. I know alot of people who grew up this way. A shift from family
dinner, where at X time dinner was on the table and the family gathered
around. Is there also an underlying shift to eat and be entertained?

------
JustSomeNobody
I am not a Millennial, but the article did mention Gen-X and their parents,
so..

I love cook. I love preparing a delicious meal for my family. We're foster
parents and currently have two under three, and I know they're too young to
really appreciate it, but I love preparing colorful, delicious meals for them.

One thing that really helps me at the store is a list. I have a wiki set up on
our home server where I track menus for the weak and recipes for those meals.
I also keep a copy of the grocery list. I print that out, scratch out anything
we already have on hand, and take that to the store. Makes it all really
simple and easy.

Once you have a dozen or two meals that the kids will eat and the parents
enjoy, you can mix and match those and also rotate in some new ones to try.
But you'll always have that base, so when that hectic week happens, at least
meals won't be an issue.

~~~
mholmes680
I also have two under 3, so I can commiserate with making routine tasks as
easy and efficient as possible. Ironic that you're running your kitchen like a
restaurant tho, eh?

I've been trying lists with Trello, Alexa, or the ShopRite app because I
either forget to print the list, or the printer is out of toner, or I can't
read my handwriting because my only free time was 2am and I couldn't see
straight anyways. There's no elegant and complete solution out there that
works for me yet.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Wiki is the only thing I like. I don't like apps for this that make me enter
too much into forms.

My menus look something like:

October 21, 2016

    
    
       * [[recipe1:recipes|Recipe One]]
    
       * [[recipe2:recipes|Recipe Two]]
    
       * [[recipe3:recipes|Recipe Three]]
    
       * [[recipe4:recipes|Recipe Four]]
    
       * [[recipe5:recipes|Recipe Five]]
    
       * [[recipe6:recipes|Recipe Six]]
    

[[ShoppingList20161021:lists|Shopping List]]

\-----

October 14, 2016

...

Now, I can just click to pull up the recipe and or shopping list.

Recipes can be cut and paste from websites or a picture taken with phone from
one of my cookbooks, etc.

I can cut and paste recipe to make new menus very simply or I can just copy
entire menus with shopping lists; just need to edit the date.

Oh and I have a vpn running, so if I do happen to leave my list, I can still
get to it.

------
CiPHPerCoder
Was this generated by @thinkpiecebot?

[https://twitter.com/thinkpiecebot](https://twitter.com/thinkpiecebot)

------
ebbv
I remember articles like this about Gen-X (my generation) 15 years ago. I
think it's just the case that people in their early 20's usually don't cook. I
know I didn't. But as I and many of my friends moved into our 30's, we
discovered the joy and satisfaction of cooking at home. Now my wife and I cook
at home quite a bit. I'm sure we still go out to eat way more than our
parents' generation, but we also use ingredients from local farmers' markets
in our cooking quite often, which our parents didn't do really.

My point is, millennials are young; young people don't cook. This isn't a big
surprise.

~~~
mordocai
The article actually makes the point (not in the clickbait title) that gen
Xers and even their parents are also spending more at restaurants and bars and
less on groceries.

~~~
ourmandave
Asked and answered, counselor.

The line right under the title says: _Because they prefer chips from CVS and
going out to restaurants. And, increasingly, so do their parents._

------
jdavis703
Maybe they could actually build grocery stores close to where millennials want
to (and can afford) to live? My nearest "grocery store" is a Target over a
mile away.

~~~
avelis
Food deserts are a real issue in some cities that are no where near as dense
as our major metropolitan cities.

Honestly, I start thinking about the grocery store model and wondering if it
needs to evolve.

------
_-__---
No real thoughts about the content of the article, but shouldn't the Atlantic
be able to produce a better looking plot than a stock, calibri-fonted MS Excel
line-graph?

------
specialp
I believe this is not just a shift in spending behavior by age, but a product
of people waiting longer to have children. Cooking a meal as a single person
or couple is harder to justify vs a restaurant. When cooking it becomes more
cost and time effective the more quantity of food you cook. For me it is far
more time and cost effective to eat an inexpensive meal from a take out place,
although I like cooking.

------
alashley
Why does this article make assumptions about me because of the period I was
born in?

~~~
ARCarr
Because that's how statistics work.

------
losvedir
This touches on a question I've been pondering lately: why _isn 't_ it cheaper
to eat out than to go grocery shopping?

Obviously, this doesn't apply to fancy restaurants, but it seems to me that
due to economies of scale there should be some class of budget "eating out"
offering that is actually cheaper than if you were to make it yourself.

~~~
nostrademons
You're paying for the service.

The parts of the food chain that enjoy economies of scale are in raising,
harvesting/slaughtering, preparing, distributing, and cooking the food.
Plating the food and bringing it to your table has no economies of scale, good
service has diseconomies of scale, and dishwashing has only mild economies of
scale.

There is a category of food - store-bought prepared, grab'n'go, and fast food
- that actually does move the cooking to the institution, and these foods
aren't _much_ more expensive than prepping them yourself (certainly cheaper
when you count the cost of labor). You have freshness & selection limitations
on them, though: since non-refrigerated food goes bad within an hour or two
after being cooked, they're limited to those items that can move in sufficient
volume that at the scale they're being cooked, they'll sell within an hour.

~~~
losvedir
Yeah, I guess I didn't make clear by "eating out" but I don't mean sit-down
service at a restaurant. Just any sort of institution that provides cooked
food to me.

I suppose you're right that "fast food" might be cheaper, but it's so
unhealthy. I would think some business offering rice, beans, lentils, teeeeny
bits of meat, cheap but fresh vegetables could still come in cheaper than
preparing food yourself, provided they don't have to wait your table or
anything. Maybe they only offer one or two meal options and it's somewhat pre-
cooked.

~~~
nostrademons
That'd probably work on a unit-economics basis but fail on a volume basis. In
order for cooking-at-scale to work, you need to drive sufficient sales within
your local area that you can ensure that food is bought within a few minutes
after cooking it. The vast majority of people buy by taste rather than by
healthiness. (Otherwise, we wouldn't have such an obesity epidemic in the US.)

Incidentally, in markets where there _are_ a fair number of health-conscious
yuppies, you do get healthy fast-food restaurants, eg. Loving Hut in
SF/BayArea. I hear Portland has a big food truck that scene that's somewhat
similar.

------
ohstopitu
I personally don't have time at the end of the day to go shopping...so my
shopping is generally reserved for weekends. I do go to the grocery store to
get my stuff...but if there was a better solution I'd switch in a heartbeat.

By better I mean there are so many solutions to explore (the following two
came to the top of my head):

1\. Amazon style - buy & deliver quickly local marketplace (the local chains
could easily compete as they'd have to maintain quality and price)

2\. Uber pool style delivery - a truck that goes around delivering (with some
kind of mobile app / website that has real time information on it's stock and
the ability to reserve items @ a premium)

------
zollidia
It's not the fact that I hate Grocery Shopping. I hate going into the store
during peak hours. I know I can always go before or after peak hours, but
working second shift makes that difficult when most stores near me close at
11pm. Coupled with the other issue: People. Hacking and coughing, not covering
mouths, kids running around with no parental supervision. Or those same kids
walking the cart into things or other people. (I know that not all kids are
like this, but "one bad apple spoils the bunch")

I understand that going to a restaurant is no better, but at lease I can call
ahead, pick up the food and leave.

------
cyborgx7
Oh, it's the daily "Why won't millenials engage in the usual consumerist
patternsß Don't they know they are ruining the economy?"-headline. I feel
sorry for the article writers that get burdened with this stuff.

~~~
ihuman
Not really. The headline is clickbaity, but then the author goes against the
headline in the third paragraph

    
    
      But this story reflects two universal truths about culture.
      First, many cultural changes for which Millennials are
      initially blamed really reflect broader trends affecting
      even the oldest consumers. Second, many cultural changes
      are really reversions to old norms.

~~~
alex-
I agree the author made it very clear that this was not a millennial behaviour
alone

>The big story here is not that young people are uniquely turning away from
groceries. Rather, the story is a structural shift toward eating out at
restaurants

>So what seems to be a strictly Millennial trend is in fact part of a much
broader cultural shift.

------
jboggan
Because hardly any of them know how to cook.

~~~
mcshicks
Exactly, why not title the article "Why Do Millennials Hate to Cook".

------
carlisle_
Why, as a millennial, does it feel like everybody is judging me for the
decisions me and my peers make? If people want to be observational that's
fine, but you don't have to look very far in the comments here to see the
thinly veiled disdain for the habits of my generation.

~~~
sosborn
Generally speaking, everyone hates the new guy. I'm a Gen-Xer and we went
through the same thing, as I'm sure every generation before us did. My advice?
Ignore it. It is meaningless, lazy journalism.

------
pcmaffey
Grocery stores are the absolute best venues for people-watching. When
traveling especially, the best way to get a sense of the people in a new place
is to spend time at their grocery store.

------
tnzn
Why do newspaper love to talk about "millenials" as if they were a homogenous
category so much ?

------
fit2rule
Because they don't know how to enjoy cooking?

