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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

#141

Post by wl »

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…

> Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste. But I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised apple.

If I'm making pie or apple sauce, I'll seek out bruised apples—and pay less for them. Paying normal prices for bruised apples? No thanks.

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

#142

Post by gramontblanc »

nmstoker wrote: post #86
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 - obviousl…

Seems like a bold prediction that most (maybe any?) grocery stores have the level of corporate organization or even level of education to even consider a "secret order substitution to prole cart-pushers who will then have to answer customer service calls asking why their order was amended to add a more expensive item".

Someone down the line has to actually act out the 'evil algorithm', and will then have to actually interact with the aggrieved customers. In a third party delivery service I imagine it would be trivially easy to get the line workers to betray the customer / rest of the organization, but there are also none of the incentives to, for example, try to dump low velocity items through deliberate substitution errors.

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

#143

Post by seibelj »

TuringNYC wrote: post #130
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.

When I lived in Brooklyn, the standard at most fruit/veg vendors was to have the best stuff inside and the bruised stuff outside (e.g., at 40cents/lb discount.) We usually brought from the outside and did the math on whether the recoverable portion was worth the discount. Unfortunately the supermarkets do not work this way -- they seem to have one class of goods. I'm not sure what happens to their bruised goods, but…

I believe supermarkets then sell it to the next group, which are restaurants or wholesale purchasers that send to factories. Highly unlikely that non-rotten food of supermarket quality is wasted.

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

#144

Post by willcipriano »

the_jeremy wrote: post #49
zoomablemind wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. Price them down, ppl would consider the deal. It's a market, isn't it? Or, well, it's a supermarket being part of super-chains... Potatoes by pound priced like fruits.

There's at least one company trying to do this - Misfit Markets sells boxes of ugly produce delivered to your door, and they claim to be cheaper than supermarket prices as an ugliness discount. (Disclaimer: I've never used them, a relative works for them)

My wife bought into one of these services, the $25 box we received contained about 10 - 15 dollars worth of produce from my local store but at a lower quality. It was also random and often contained undesirable items in large quantities (who needs 12 lemons for the week?, What am I supposed to do with 3 fingerling potatoes?). I used to work in food service and it was pretty obvious to me that they were sourcing items from Sysco or US Foods by the way the items were tagged and packaged. I think the shipping costs eat away any value you could expect from something like this.

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

#145

Post by moosey »

asiachick wrote: post #55
kerkeslager wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not actually objective quality.

This car has dents but those don't matter. Full price for you. Car still gets you from a to b just fine. This jacket has some holes and few stains but it will still keep you warm.

Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and taste, most other differences being unimportant.

A jacket with a hole has massive loss of effectiveness, and I don't receive a new jacket to wear each day.

A car with a dent has significant loss of value, not that it's something I'm terribly concerned with, I run all cars until they die.

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

#146

Post by kube-system »

majormajor wrote: post #121
Animats wrote: post #91

The current big problem with online food shopping is that it's being done by sending low-wage people into ordinary supermarkets. This is inefficient, but until recently this was a niche market. The trouble with doing it that way is that the ordering system doesn't know the inventory. You get some subset of your order. That's no good. Webvan tried to do it right 20 years go, with local fulfillment centers and automati…

Amazon does this sort of direct fulfillment under the Prime Now name. They don't do a great job of keeping a consistent set of things in stock, though. Kroger brands also do this. But you can still get inventory problems - something the system thinks is in stock on Monday at noon when you place the order can be gone by Tuesday at 6 when they're packing your order for you. Both of those have been way better in my expe…

> Amazon does this sort of direct fulfillment under the Prime Now name.

Do they? When I order, the food comes from my local Whole Foods in a passenger vehicle, and I get the same OOS issues as Instacart. How is the process any different than how Instacart works?

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

#147

Post by noetic_techy »

I think this has a technological solution, but it will be far more complex to solve.

Imagine a virtual store shelf. I for one like to see competing products and prices for those "inner isle items". That could easily be digitized.

Fruit and meat selection is another matter entirely. Short of some sort of remote surrogate system that lets you login and see the shelf at your local market real time, I'm not sure how this could be solved. Sometime I go looking for specific cut of meat and find a better deal on something else. Sometimes I'm curious to see what else is available and/or on sale. I think the capital investment to get something going would be a lot but not insurmountable. You may have to change the way items are displayed, have some high powered cameras to zoom in on meat prices. Fruit, I cant imagine anything short of a robot arm that allows me to login and inspect myself, and even then how do you gauge "softness" without some sort of tactile feedback. Possible but expensive to implement.

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

#149

Post by kube-system »

supercanuck wrote: post #4

Once 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.

I don't think there have been margins in grocery in my lifetime.

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

#150

Post by altoidaltoid »

ISL wrote: post #31
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…

Our local store, QFC in Seattle, has been doing a great job of selecting produce for our curbside delivery. Quality has matched or beaten what I normally select myself. I don't know where they're finding such huge broccoli crowns, but they're consistently doing so (we're ordering per crown, and paying per-pound, so the incentives are aligned there). On substitutions -- they require customer review of every substituti…

Your local QFC is really a Kroger btw
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