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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

#81

Post by somebrody »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #78
bane wrote: post #48

We 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 sev…

If I read all that, do I get my $60 back? No? Then I don't care. It's The Wrong Way.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

rasfincher wrote: post #72

We'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.

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by ISL »

basseq wrote: post #53
ISL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the wish is for scripting. Most of my buying is algorithmic, but the filters don't match my algorithms. It is difficult to express, "Please give me the cereal that I like the most that is under $X/lb. If there is an exceptional deal, buy more." without an API or scripting.

Which, if you break it down further: 1. Everyone's "algorithm" is different. Even if you could bake every possible filter into your eGrocery product, can you imagine the UX nightmare? 2. The "that I like the most" is a tough thing to quantify. Who is "I"? Me? My wife? My kids? My mom who's coming to visit this weekend? What do I like? Specific brands? Things I've bought before? From that store, or a different one? Th…

That's why user-scripting makes sense!

The downside, for the vendor, is that I'd also wind up scripting price-searching at multiple local grocery stores for equivalent items. If I can just curbside pick up what I need at both stores, they're literally next-door to each other.

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

#84

Post by elicash »

I still think the design of these apps can be dramatically improved.

I just fired up Instacart now for my local grocery store and searched for eggs. Featured was a dozen eggs for $4.59 (why featured?), and I'm not sure why that's featured when it's a terrible price.

I see my normal eggs at $1.99, but then I can get the "store choice" (not sure what that means... it's not that the grocery store owns the brand) 18 count for $2.89. So unlike at the store where it tells you price per egg, I have to do my own math.

Okay, math done, let me check American cheese next.

There are three "featured" cheeses plus one "store choice." Again, I don't know what those mean. Then I see the deli sliced, but the deli slice is per pound not in ounces like the pre-packaged cheese. Okay, that's the same as in-store, too, so I'll give it a pass.

Then I see a giant list of other brands, but they're grouped in a seemingly random way. It's not grouped by brand, or by count. Is it popularity? Why is there no way to sort by cost per ounce? I can sort, it appears by total cost, except it's not actually sorting by that, either, bc it still has those weirdly labeled featured four items up top.

Could go on, but will stop there.

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

#85

Post by hckr_news »

lostapathy wrote: post #30
karatestomp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Delivery fee + Tip also. Best option is probably pick up as you save some time without getting charged other fees or needing to to tip anyone.

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

#86

Post by nmstoker »

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…

This is why I avoid online for fresh food, instead getting them to do the heavy lifting items and resilient commodities (eg they can't mess up a bag of flour, bottles of wine, beer, Coke etc; if they're damaged too badly they'll obviously be unable to supply them).

Deselecting the substitution acceptable option is also wise. This was a major obvious flaw even back in 1999 when Shatner was pushing Priceline - obviously they'd have an incentive to pretend they had to substitute a certain percentage of the premium brand stuff for cheaper items and do it sparingly enough that they made more profit whilst trying not to lose you as a customer. My experience in the UK is that Ocado always tries to substitute items with a worse cost to weigh ratio - it's particularly silly because they think I won't notice (feels like they should detect that I'm focused and dial it back!)

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

#87

Post by leetcrew »

ping_pong wrote: post #33
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Social distancing is another myth. In a place like a supermarket, microdroplets with SARS-CoV-2 will linger in the air for 10 minutes. Social distancing is meaningless.

okay, I'll bite. you're ignoring a lot of important variables here. the total volume and circulation of air, number of people in the store, your distance from other people, and whether you and others wear masks all affect the probability that you get infected when you go to the store. if you, the other shoppers, and the store do everything right, the odds of infection are pretty low.

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

#88

Post by moogly »

Not American, but I started using online grocery stores about 5 years ago. I have not stepped inside a physical grocery store since.

Sure, sometimes I can get a few wares with a crappy expiration date, but that's not a huge deal, I'll just eat that thing first.

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

#89

Post by camelNotation »

I would pay for a personal shopper who is working for me, towards my interests, and not in the interests of any particular store.

We can't trust store employees to give us the best products because not all grocery items are created equal. An apple is not just an apple. There are good apples and bad apples. I don't trust someone whose incentive is to sell all the apples to give me a good apple when they can give me a bad apple that won't otherwise sell.

I also don't like that a store employee only works for one store. I would rather pay a personal shopper to go to grocery store #1 and then grocery store #2 if necessary to get the brands I prefer. Having someone in grocery store #1 tell me "Brand X is out of stock, so we substituted brand Z" is not preferable.

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

#90

Post by skywhopper »

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…

Yep. This has been our experience as well. Not only do the pickers have no incentive to do a good job (and often aren't even trained in how to judge the produce and meat they are selecting); and not only do mind-boggling substitutions take place sometimes; but in just about every online grocery order we've made in the past two months (so about 10 times by this point), we've gotten some items that were just plain wrongly chosen--ie we asked for one thing and got something entirely different that might have been nearby in the store, and was rung up as what we ordered, but we didn't actually get the item we ordered.

Lots of these problems could be improved through better technology (there's a running joke on Twitter about accidentally ordering a single banana or fifty avocados, and it's amazing how truly bad the grocery websites are at representing what it is you're even ordering) and by optimizing the product selection for online ordering and delivery distribution (versus today where most grocery delivery seems to be done by store staff walking the store and building a cart by looking for the things on a print-out of the website order), but what grocery company is going to invest in those sorts of fundamental changes when the CW is that we'll be past this pandemic within a year or two at most?

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