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.
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
#72We'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.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The shavings from baby carrot production are still used, for juice and pulp.
For the benefit of any other perplexed non-Americans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_carrot#%22Baby-cut%22_car...
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#74Friend 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.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not actually objective quality.
This is true in some cases, but not most.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#76I like going to the grocery store.
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.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#77Once 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.
There are margins in grocery? Walmart and Kroger put a pretty swift end to that.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#78We 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 o…
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.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#79It'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.…
I’ve noticed Wegman’s has recently been separating fruit by “ripe today” and “ripe in a few days” and it’s really great. Especially for things like peaches and avocados that seem to have a pretty limited window between hard as a rock and rotten.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#80Earlier 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-...
> But when a crop is complete, farmers plow everything back into the soil. Some of it ends up as organic matter that is supporting soil health, and that is okay, too.
Basically declaring that the waste is not waste. Solving problems by changing definitions.