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What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

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Re: What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

#31

Post by jon2k17 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #28
tommynicholas wrote: post #23

Many comments saying something to the effect of "$140 for $80 worth of groceries? Robbery!" What's $80 worth of groceries? It's what you're willing to pay $80 for. The grocery store is marking up the food from their suppliers, is that a rip off? Grocery stores in urban areas charge more than in rural areas, rip off? When there's only 1 small store in an area (food deserts) they charge 10-30% more - an outrage? This i…

The outrage is that they are intentionally obfuscating the cost of using their service. It's not unreasonable at all to want to know how much more using their service costs than if I were to go shopping myself; that's how I can do the cost evaluation of whether it's worth it for me to spend that extra money to save me the time of a shopping trip. Information is critical for driving free markets. Instacart is pulling…

There are plenty of same as store price grocers on instacart. Why not shop there?

Re: What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

#32

Post by Nullabillity »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #7

I've never used Instacart but it seems to be a weird thing to outrage over, when apparently you are told the final payment upfront, and you know you are ordering from a premium service that is fundamentally a luxury offering. And I'd expect most people to have some basic ballpark idea of how much everyday groceries cost. Does this person also expect businesses to disclose their profit margins before he's comfortable…

> Does this person also expect businesses to disclose their profit margins before he's comfortable doing business with them?

Is that really such an unreasonable demand?

Re: What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

#33

Post by jon2k17 »

pyrophane wrote: post #13

Instacart and some of these other apps charge a LOT of money, so they go to pretty great lengths to hide the amount they are actually charging. Instacart is being especially clever by raising the price of the item then charging an additional service fee and delivery fee with, apparently, surge pricing. It also isn't clear how much of any of this goes to the actual person doing the work, so you still need to tip aroun…

From my experience, there are plenty of stores on instacart that are same price as store and they are transparent about it. Why not shop there? This seems like a store which they mark up.

Re: What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

#35

Post by Nullabillity »

tommynicholas wrote: post #23

Many comments saying something to the effect of "$140 for $80 worth of groceries? Robbery!" What's $80 worth of groceries? It's what you're willing to pay $80 for. The grocery store is marking up the food from their suppliers, is that a rip off? Grocery stores in urban areas charge more than in rural areas, rip off? When there's only 1 small store in an area (food deserts) they charge 10-30% more - an outrage? This i…

$160 for $80 worth of groceries is insane. $160 for $80 worth of groceries that you claim is worth $130 is fraud.

Re: What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

#36

Post by Nullabillity »

wpeterson wrote: post #12

This may be a confusing thing, I suspect Instacart may get volume discount from stores for bringing the extra business. So this markup may be based on discounted cost instacart pays, not necessarily what YOU would pay at the store. Still think it's a crazy premium, but I enjoy grocery shopping.

> So this markup may be based on discounted cost instacart pays, not necessarily what YOU would pay at the store.

Doesn't that just make things even worse?

Re: What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

#37

Post by pfooti »

MegaButts wrote: post #25
pfooti wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wellll, I'd wondered how instacart worked, when my nearby nice grocery store got bought by safeway. Originally I thought it was just the delivery fee, and I felt like the delivery people couldn't possibly be getting a living wage out of the work. Here at least I can see that instacart gets enough revenue to probably be sustainable and pay someone a reasonable wage for doing the actual work of going to the grocery sto…

I'd love to hear about some great small groceries in the outer sunset. Please share!

Assuming you mean the Outer Sunset of San Francisco:

Noriega Produce Mart (gus's, but I love that it's NPM) has almost everything I need, except the meat / fish selection is pretty low. Noriega and 43rd(ish).

Other Avenues (judah and 41st-ish) is a worker-owned cooperative. They don't carry meat at all, but they have a great bulk food selection.

Both have excellent produce selections and a surprising amount of useful dry goods - with the exception of meat / fish, the only real pull to Andronico's was the parking lot.

I went to Guerra Quality Meats for the first time last weekend, and it was pretty great as a butcher, and had some fish selection. They're at taraval and 15th. I'm considering going back to marin sun farms for their CSA meat boxes. There's also a fish seller going in at irving and 42nd (or so) where the old cajun restaurant was. That's a long-term thing, though, since it's been "coming soon" for a while.

There's a couple great Asian markets up on irving - sunset super at 25th and irving is really great, although a tad overwhelming at times. They've got a lot of meat and fish.

No grocery store in the area is as cheap as going to safeway and shopping frugally (or quite as satisfying as Berkeley Bowl, but since I don't go to the east bay often anymore, it's hard to justify a really long drive to the grocery store), but these places sell high-quality organic food and other good brands of dry goods (I can get both king arthur and antimo caputo flours for my breads and pizzas, respectively, at NPM) and are local stores rather than chains, so I'm willing to pay the premium to support them.

Re: What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

#38

Post by CocaKoala »

Nullabillity wrote: post #32
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #7

I've never used Instacart but it seems to be a weird thing to outrage over, when apparently you are told the final payment upfront, and you know you are ordering from a premium service that is fundamentally a luxury offering. And I'd expect most people to have some basic ballpark idea of how much everyday groceries cost. Does this person also expect businesses to disclose their profit margins before he's comfortable…

> Does this person also expect businesses to disclose their profit margins before he's comfortable doing business with them? Is that really such an unreasonable demand?

Do you expect a restaurant to give you the ingredient cost and labour cost of your meal on your bill, so you can tell how much the privilege of having somebody cook for you was?

Re: What is Instacart really charging? the breakdown

#40

Post by jimmywanger »

Nullabillity wrote: post #32
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #7

I've never used Instacart but it seems to be a weird thing to outrage over, when apparently you are told the final payment upfront, and you know you are ordering from a premium service that is fundamentally a luxury offering. And I'd expect most people to have some basic ballpark idea of how much everyday groceries cost. Does this person also expect businesses to disclose their profit margins before he's comfortable…

> Does this person also expect businesses to disclose their profit margins before he's comfortable doing business with them? Is that really such an unreasonable demand?

> Is that really such an unreasonable demand?

Yes. That's how price controls and messed up economies start out.

Sometimes profit margins are highly misleading. For instance, the profit margins for software development are extremely high if you calculate them a certain way. ("You're only paying how much for capital and electricity and you're charging me how much?")

The main thing is what value the business brings you. They can charge whatever they want. As long as you value their service/goods more than what they're charging you, who cares how much it costs them?

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