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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

#101

Post by hinkley »

klyrs wrote: post #97
hinkley wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can't substitute one brand of salsa for another. That'll start fights in some circles.

Recent substitutions I've seen (where I specified "no substitutions"): Ice cream flavors: my favorite for something I'd never pick (still ate it, annoyed) Margarine instead of butter -- the heck? Won't use it. Vanilla yogurt in place of plain yogurt. Slowly eating it for breakfast, annoyed; can't use it in savory dishes which is what it's for. Juices: I can't stand sugar alcohols, and got a ton of crap full of sucral…

Not justifying it, but try dewatering the yogurt and see if that does anything for your savory dishes. I don't think I have the right gauge of strainer and end up using leftover coffee filters.

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

#102

Post by [deleted] »

fsckboy wrote: post #96
denimnerd42 wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

in a competitive market (which US groceries mostly are) if the store has to "eat the cost" of bruised fruit, then the price will necessarily have to be higher on the fruit they sell. Think of it this way, you have fruit at home to be shared by all the members of your family, it was fine when you bought it, but now some of it is bruised. So now you own a mix of fruit: what do you do, throw away the bruised fruit, or t…

[deleted]

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

#103

Post by optymizer »

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…

That's exactly what my experience was as well. Costco via Instacart was unreasonably expensive (30%+). We rarely use Instacart now. Most often, it's Amazon Fresh and we plan to go to Costco in person.

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

kerkeslager wrote: post #45
denimnerd42 wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by strictnein »

somebrody wrote: post #81
JoshTriplett wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh? No, you'd read that and then not order it in the first place.

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

#106

Post by darrenf »

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…

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food.

In London there's a startup which sells such rejected, ugly fruit and veg: https://www.oddbox.co.uk/ (no affiliation beyond being a happy customer)

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

#108

Post by pdx6 »

I enjoy going to the store too, I want to see what I can make and the quality of the food before I get in line to buy it.

I don't think online delivery has changed much since the days of Webvan. When I order on Instacart, Postmates, etc, I get the worst produce, wrong cheese, and just like in the article -- a single banana instead of 1 bunch. Like others have said, the apps need a lot of work, particularly around out of stock items.

Unfortunately, during the pandemic, the lines at the stores were long due to social distancing and overall panic, so I went back to online delivery. The problem was that no where delivered and times were weeks out if anything was available at all! The delivery companies weren't even working the one time in history they should shine and take the grocery market by the horns.

The upside to all this is I ended up going to locally run stores, bodegas, and farmer's markets, which didn't have everything I wanted because they are small, but going to 2 or 3 isn't hat much of a hassle.

As a related side note, my elderly parents did "curb side pickup" for groceries out in Nevada. My mom told me that she often got to "try new foods". It made me laugh, but made me think that for the immuno-vulnerable, do they want to go on a forced diet selected by a low-wage personal shopper?

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

#109

Post by dooglius »

fsckboy wrote: post #96
denimnerd42 wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

in a competitive market (which US groceries mostly are) if the store has to "eat the cost" of bruised fruit, then the price will necessarily have to be higher on the fruit they sell. Think of it this way, you have fruit at home to be shared by all the members of your family, it was fine when you bought it, but now some of it is bruised. So now you own a mix of fruit: what do you do, throw away the bruised fruit, or t…

Yes, you are correct that you are essentially paying a premium, but the issue is less about the item's cost and more about the need for time investment and physical presence--correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like it's possible to get the same level of un-bruisedness from delivery or curbside pickup that you could from going into the store and picking fruit yourself.

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

#110

Post by Larrikin »

camelNotation wrote: post #89

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…

This was always my issue with using a service provided by the store. But after talking to friends and finally being convinced to try it turns out that:

Grocery store workers are almost never stock holders in the company that are trying to push up their profit margins at all cost in spite of the consumer. Grocery stores either have multiple competitors in an area or face an area where it will become a food desert, people will prefer a grocery store but their existence is no way guaranteed. They also can get their money back on products that didn't sell in certain cases. It's almost always in their interest to get you the best product.

Grocery store workers tend to fall in the category of teenagers getting their first job that aren't trusted with anything meaningful, slackers trusted with the same responsibilities as the teenagers, and butchers/produce specialist/etc that take their job extremely seriously that care about what they do. It was surprising at first talking to them over years but there alot of people that take their role in the food chain extremely serious and really love what they do.

The majority of food is mass produced, including the produce, so most stuff you have atleast a week left to consume if it's out on shelves.

Getting something you didn't want usually ends up being as likely as getting something yourself you didn't want. It's almost always an oversight from someone that is actually intimately familiar with the items because that's their job.

This is in stark comparison to a delivery app employee that really only cares about getting as many deliveries in a day as possible. If you get a single bad onion, they don't care so long as the person getting their shirt from Wal-Mart rates them well and they can just work for multiple services averaging out their numbers. Plus you aren't going to be a dick and not tip them right, what with the whole culture surrounding how you have to tip anyone doing a delivery for you?

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