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Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

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Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#21

Post by rossdavidh »

bpodgursky wrote: post #5

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 r…

The only difference between you and the 300 million other people in this country who did that, is that you admit it to yourself.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#22

Post by ping_pong »

kerkeslager wrote: post #14
elmerfud wrote: post #2

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…

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 ac…

That's a great marketing gimmick that some companies have made, but it's largely false.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#23

Post by basseq »

elmerfud wrote: post #2

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…

Even if quality is there, how ripe do you want? Are you going to use those avocados tonight, or later in the week? Do you like green bananas or ones that are turning brown?

Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale today?" method of shopping!

Even packaged goods are tough. When I'm in a store, I know quickly which product I want. I may not remember the brand name, but I can scan the shelf and find it.

Online, I have to sort through a myriad of options, not to mention sizes and variants.

BBQ sauce, for instance, returns 58 results on Peapod. Sweet Baby Ray's, which I like, is 22 of those. There are 13 different variants (original, hickory & brown sugar, honey, buffalo sauce, sweet'n spicy, honey mustard, honey teriyaki, sweet teriyaki, sweet vidalia onion, maple, sweet chili glaze, honey chipotle, no sugar added) and 7 different sizes (14oz, 16oz, 18oz, 18.5oz, 28oz, 40oz, 80oz).

Holy crap!

I know what the label looks like, and I know the bottle is about yea-big. The images online are 200x200... I can barely SEE the label.

Then, what if what I want isn't in stock? Is it going to appear on the page? Am I just not going to get it? Would I get a substitute, as I might if I was in the store?

By the time I do that mental exercise for 50 items, I might as well drive to the store.

These are hard challenges.

One thing that might make a difference is integration with club cards. Giant knows what I buy down to frequency and UPC. Why haven't they done better integration to link my in-person buying with encouraging me to buy the same items online?

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#24

Post by 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.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#25

Post by encoderer »

kerkeslager wrote: post #14
elmerfud wrote: post #2

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…

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 ac…

Notwithstanding the baby carrots example, most ugly produced is still used and sold. It’s made into soups, salsas, juices, etc.

I’ve read that one reason we get so many e-coli infections from lettuce is that there is no secondary market (no lettuce juice) so the farmers drive it to the livestock farms and track back germs to the lettuce farm on their wheels.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#26

Post by [deleted] »

kerkeslager wrote: post #14
elmerfud wrote: post #2

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…

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 ac…

[deleted]

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#27

Post by Ididntdothis »

basseq wrote: post #23
elmerfud wrote: post #2

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…

Even if quality is there, how ripe do you want? Are you going to use those avocados tonight, or later in the week? Do you like green bananas or ones that are turning brown? Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale today?" method of shopping! Even packaged goods are tough. When I'm in a store, I know quickly which product I want. I may not remember the brand name, but I can scan the shelf and find it.…

"Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale today?" method of shopping!"

That one is really important with fresh food. Maybe the lettuce looks good or the cucumbers, who knows?

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#28

Post by bpodgursky »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #15
bpodgursky wrote: post #5

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 r…

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.

Seattle, so yeah.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#29

Post by encoderer »

ping_pong wrote: post #22
kerkeslager wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ac…

That's a great marketing gimmick that some companies have made, but it's largely false. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...

Thank you, I remember reading this as a tweet but couldn’t find it (twitter search is.... lacking)

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#30

Post by lostapathy »

karatestomp wrote: post #8
elmerfud wrote: post #2

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…

All those things, plus: 1) concern that prices online are higher so the delivery option's more expensive than it looks (food delivery services do this), 2) concern that some or all sale prices won't be used online—a lot of my shopping past my immediate needs consists of checking the canned and frozen sections for any actually good sales.

This is why I’ve backed away from it. I don’t mind paying for delivery, but the fact that I oy both a direct few and a variable extra markup per item, and that markup seems to vary so much per item makes it hard to swallow for me. It just feels like scummy enough that I’ll go to the store.

Give me an option where the cost of convenience is obvious and straightforward and I’d come back.

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