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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

#171

Post by tonetheman »

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 this this. In our area you cannot get good pickers.

I am sure they are tired or bored or something... but it is most of the time not worth the hassle. So I get it... but it is not a good experience at all.

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

#172

Post by pgrote »

linsomniac wrote: post #151

I guess I'm in the minority, but I've been chomping at the bit for curbside pickup of groceries for years. Our local stores finally started offering it around 6 months ago and it's been our primary method of shopping since then. We've had pretty good luck as far as produce goes. I think 4-5 things have been bad, to various degrees. But even then, it has saved a TON of time, even if I go in and pick the things I'm par…

>I guess I'm in the minority

I am there with you. We've used instacart and walmart for deliveries and sams's for curbside pick up. Sam's has been wonderful without any issues. Their inventory is spot on 24 hours out.

Walmart is hit and miss with inventory, but it is probably due to lead time. It takes 3 days to get a spot and by then some items are sold out. Learned early to not use substitutions.

The more disappointing has been instacart with aldi. Our first time using them was a dream. Shopper texted while shopping, asked about substitutions and communicated. The next 2 times no communication. Things were substituted even when we asked for no substitutions in online orders. Both times items arrived damaged. Crushed bread and smashed tomatoes in first and an opened bag of pretzels the next. Instacart costs more, too.

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

#173

Post by xivzgrev »

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…

Exactly. Online grocery ordering still has a significant problem: accurately delivering on a customer's wishes.

It's a complicated problem. Customers have various "squishy" preferences - your bruised apples may be fine to me. Customers also have dietary restrictions that they just can't have. In-store inventory (esp fresh items) is constantly changing and may not be up to date. Items can easily look similar but are actually different in grabbing the wrong item or substituting.

When you go to the store, you can get exactly what you want. Until that problem is solved, grocery delivery will always be a minority.

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

#174

Post by AmericanChopper »

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…

> an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food.

This isn’t true at all. It’s literally a myth made up by people who want to sell ugly food to consumers. Ugly produce is used as animal food, sold to food service companies where it’s ugliness wont matter after they prepare it, or occasionally tilled back into the soil as fertilizer.

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

#175

Post by satori99 »

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…

My parents used to run a produce market agency in Sydney. Their clients were banana farmers and their customers were national supermarket chains.

From what I remember, not much was ever wasted and trashed out of their warehouses. Any bananas that couldn't be sold in supermarkets due to quality or size issues, were sold to bakers and smaller market retailers, and anything left after that was sold as animal feed.

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

#176

Post by akpq19 »

ping_pong wrote: post #114
leetcrew wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I said social distancing, not wearing masks. Everyone wearing masks is very, very effective in stopping the spread. I've been saying it for months even when the CDC and WHO said the opposite, and some sheeple started to parrot that malicious misinformation. Regarding social distancing, which I specifically mentioned, someone put in the effort to calculate a model and simulate it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv9JQ…

Here in Europe the official government propaganda in February/March was that masks were entirely useless. Like you, I thought that was nonsense.

Now in May one is required to wear toy masks in supermarkets (scarf is also allowed). The official propaganda says they are effective.

Government at work. The bailouts have already begun.

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

#177

Post by bobthepanda »

tzs wrote: post #62
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…

I don't know how standardized layout is within a chain, but at my local Walmart superstore the area immediately to the right of the entrance closest to the grocery section is produce, baked goods, and deli. Just past that is the meat section. Immediately to the left of that entrance is check out, starting with a bunch of self-checkout stations. This makes it quite reasonable to do a quick extraction mission for produ…

Generally speaking, I find that at most supermarkets dairy, eggs and meat is at the back, because they are intentionally designed to make you walk through other things to try and squeeze in more purchases when things catch your eye. And this was true when I've lived in the NE and in the PNW.

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

#178

Post by kaitai »

hinkley wrote: post #101
klyrs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dewatering won't take out the nasty vanilla flavor or the added 12 g of sugar. Moreover, some flavored types of yogurt contain cornstarch to add body, rather than the milk content one would like from a milk product. Plain yogurt truly is a different beast that American sugar-yogurt.

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

#179

Post by wffurr »

I don't think food shopping, at least for produce, dairy, and meat, aka perishables, is something that even should be online. Why does it need to be, anyway?

I can see groceries, i.e. shelf stable items, moving largely online. That's already more convenient for bulk items (e.g. 40lb bag of cat litter).

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

#180

Post by scruple »

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…

Not even. If the produce made it to the store shelves then it is by it's definition not ugly. They should see the amount of produce that isn't sold at markets because it doesn't meet supermarket chain standards for appearance. We used to fill up the back of a pickup truck, in the late 80s and early 90s, with reject carrots for $10 from a local farmer. They were perfectly fine. We'd always keep a bunch for ourselves, of course, but the bulk of these carrots were used as bait traps. That still goes on today anywhere that carrots are grown.
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