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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

#231

Post by ghaff »

treis wrote: post #164
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…

>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. I agree. People definitely want online/delivery grocery shopping. The problem thus far has been product misses on giving the customer what they want. Ordering online today is too much of a crap shoot. You'll get 80% of what y…

If I could have "near-perfect" online shopping for a $5-10 delivery charge... Sure. The one time I've really tried it was when I had a broken foot and doing a full grocery shopping was a PITA. So I used delivery. I'd get most of what I needed with some questionable substitutions. But that was mostly OK because driving to the store and picking up a few things in a shoulder bag wasn't a big deal. Just a full grocery shopping was.

I haven't even tried in the current situation. If I go relatively early on a weekday, I find it pretty manageable and uncrowded.

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

#232

Post by MintelIE »

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…

>I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised apple And apparently grocery stores put people with opinions like yours in charge of packing produce boxes, which leads to lost sales. Nobody's arguing that they're inedible, but how much of a discount is the retailer prepared to offer me for accepting his low grade produce?

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

#233

Post by dylz »

yalogin wrote: post #225

I don't know how the delivery makes sense to people. We ordered approximately $200 worth of products from Costco and the instacart fee at the end came up to almost 80 bucks. That is something I am not willing to pay.

Instacart's price gouging is a bit of a special case (compared to many supermarkets that do curbside or delivery)

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

#234

Post by incelmods »

skywhopper wrote: post #93
nitwit005 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Plowing it back into the fields means less fertilizer is needed for future crops. How is that waste?

it's not a waste of the veggie, however it's not like a huge amount of different resources were not spent from the time the plant sprouted to the time it was determined "compost this ugly thing."

as an far down the line example - we hate DRM being misused, and by composting ugly fruit you are supporting DRM. if you have 1000 acres of crops, you'll need to fix your tractor 10 times (number out of my ass). if you sell a higher% of the food you grow, you now need 700 acres. You now need to repair the tractor 7 times. John Deere now gets 30% less money, and that 30% spent on DRM was the waste.

there are other things. like the time of the guy who has to look at the fruit, which there are less of now. he's in the sun, he gets thirsty, drinks water. if he has to be out in the sun 30% more to look through 30% more fruit, he drinks more water. and that's a waste of water.

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

#235

Post by monadic2 »

I have had so many bad experiences with instacart:

* shopper buying yams rather than potatoes (note: this was not a replacement, they seemed to genuinely believe they had bought potatoes.)

* shopper going to checkout before I can suggest a better replacement for an item.

* shopper buys obviously moldy fruit.

* shopper buys five roaster chickens as a replacement for five cornish hens.

* shopper gives up really easily on trivial things like a common chip brand.

It’s frustrating because I can both understand the shopper, but I then need to give instacart more money to actually get the food I’ve verified by phone they have in stock. Furthermore, about 80% of these omissions are most easily fixable if I just drive to the store and buy it. So yea, I just do my own shopping again so I don’t spend $30 on delivery fees and tips and end up spending $5 on furry strawberries.

I don’t understand why instacart can’t work with the store to pack the inventory by people who know where shit is, can identify products, and can inquire about inventory. Other delivery services do just fine with a two-legged approach.

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

#236

Post by NicoJuicy »

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…

France had aan ugly fruit campaign because of this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-2693000/Forg...

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

#237

Post by wanderr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #230
elicash wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is no different than being in an actual grocery store. On a phone, you've only got a couple inches to view at a time. It's TOTALLY different. If all you do as a designer is take things in store and literally transcribe them to a phone, it won't work. It's a terrible way to design. And I still don't understand difference between featured and store pick btw.

> On a phone, you've only got a couple inches to view at a time. Even more reason to ensure the more expensive items are viewed first. > And I still don't understand difference between featured and store pick btw. Cynic it me would say: there might be no difference, and this may be just intended to confuse people who would otherwise just ignore "store pick".

> Even more reason to ensure the more expensive items are viewed first.

Not if you want your customers to have a not-miserable enough experience that they will actually buy from you, and continue buying from you in the future.

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

#239

Post by hanniabu »

dannypgh wrote: post #220
kaikai wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the US and 10 years ago ate almost entirely out of dumpsters. Grocery stores throw out perfectly good food every day. If you ask in front they'll say they donate it, but in back there's a dumpster full of cartons of eggs with one egg cracked, and packaged food that's a day past its sell-by date. We waste an absurd amount of food.

It's been about 12+ years since I've regularly dumpstered food, but my experience is that more food was being thrown out before (but maybe not much before) the sell-by date than after. I think the issue is that of given the choice between something with a sell-by date a few days in the future or 10-15 days in the future at the same cost, nearly everyone is going to take the food with the better date. Which means the…

> Technical solutions could help here: it is taxing on humans and most POS systems to have to adjust the price of older inventory, but if that could be done automatically

That's a pretty good idea aid seems it could be solved entirely by software (+some signs for awareness).

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

#240

Post by dannypgh »

hanniabu wrote: post #239
dannypgh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been about 12+ years since I've regularly dumpstered food, but my experience is that more food was being thrown out before (but maybe not much before) the sell-by date than after. I think the issue is that of given the choice between something with a sell-by date a few days in the future or 10-15 days in the future at the same cost, nearly everyone is going to take the food with the better date. Which means the…

> Technical solutions could help here: it is taxing on humans and most POS systems to have to adjust the price of older inventory, but if that could be done automatically That's a pretty good idea aid seems it could be solved entirely by software (+some signs for awareness).

I doubt you've got a good data stream about sell-by dates, tho - the old and new have the same UPC generally. Maybe OCR of sell by stickers? And this doesn't help things that don't have dates, like produce.
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