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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

#361

Post by selimthegrim »

stefan_ wrote: post #166
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.

This is like writing a cost function for a global optimization algorithm for a problem with tons of parameters. You will very soon find out that the optimizer is much more adept at finding highly rated, but extremely useless outliers than you are at writing a competent cost function. Herein lies the path to coming home to a cart filled with very-cheap-cause-it-expires-tomorrow produce and no tooth paste because it di…

I mean, this sounds like every other day at the store for me.

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

#362

Post by lliamander »

wozniacki wrote: post #329
siruncledrew wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interacting with instacart sums up the expression: ”if you want something done right, do it yourself” . At least for me, having to go a store is not a big deal, it’s just overcoming “inertia to leave home”. I would much rather: order directly from the store, have the store pack everything up, express pick it up from the store, and have a confirmation expected=actual for the order. The abstraction to having a third-pa…

Some places make you dread going to grocery stores. Even club stores that require membership are bad. The experience has been nothing short of a nightmare off late, even prior to these pandemic times. Costco & Whole Food stores have especially declined in overall shopper experience. Clueless store staff, shoddy inventory levels, incompetent employees who cant be bothered to educate themselves on elementary details, r…

I always return my shopping cart, but I am vexed to no end that Costco cannot bother to have more than one cart corral for every square mile.

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

#364

Post by rglover »

Of course. Sometimes the convenience of ordering is great, but good lord, I don't want to live in the dystopian hell where you never go to the store. It's fun to joke with people. Flirt with the cashier. Bump into a friend unexpectedly. Human stuff.

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

#365

Post by Noos »

I think the real issue is probably the store hires all of one or two people to deliver food, who make really low wages and have to do a lot of orders.

You guys are expecting concierge level service from minimum wage people. Grocery stores can really only do the minimum possible usually, even with the fees

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

#366

Post by whyenot »

I did the Whole Foods delivery through Amazon a couple of times, and it was fine. The only problem was that it became almost impossible to get a delivery window. Eventually, I just gave up on it. What I have been doing more recently is ordering a box of fruit and produce (+ cheese, other stuff) from the Milk Pail drive-thru in Mountain View and then every couple of weeks I go to a grocery store and buy whatever else I need. I've only been to a grocer store twice in 8+ weeks of shutdown. That's a pretty huge change for me -- I used to go several times a week.

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

#367

Post by makecheck »

The really impressive thing about ordering groceries online is that they actually provide multiple ways to never receive what you asked for:

- The web site shopping cart can just decide to remove things silently when they go out of stock. (Dear Amazon: This is the stupidest imaginable thing you could do, please stop it!)

- The delivery person can miss a bag (and of course it’s the one containing something you really wanted, like milk).

- Someone can steal things off your porch.

- The shopper can come up with something completely unreasonable as a replacement; or they just misunderstand the order (e.g. pick a weird size or different item). I once ordered a single tomato to have nice slices for hamburgers, and I swear they found the tiniest tomato I have ever seen (I thought it was a grape).

Having said this, especially in a pandemic, it’s all been pretty reliable but still frustrating at times. A long way to go, yet.

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

#369

Post by colejohnson66 »

jimhi wrote: post #353
colejohnson66 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2,996 people are confirmed to have died in the 9/11 terrorist attack, and look at how the country reacted. Compare that to today where more than that die (just from coronavirus) every day . There’s now over five million dead people who are believed to have died from it. Not to get too off topic, but it’s very concerning that a very substantial portion of the (US) population is convinced it’s some kind of “hoax” being…

I am not disagreeing this is an epic disaster but let's keep the facts straight. There are over five million people believed to be infected with Covid-19 counted. The confirmed death count is ~355k.

Ah yes. Correct. My quick google search for a statistic shows 5 million something in the preview text with no detail and I took it for deaths. My bad.

Still, that’s 100x 9/11, and people are saying it’s no big deal. That was my point.

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

#370

Post by joeyjojo »

crazygringo wrote: post #268
kerkeslager wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Playing double-devil's advocate: 1) Most people have no problem buying ugly food. Much of the standardization of produce comes from packaging and packing requirements. Non-standard produce is still consumed in other forms: juice, frozen, soup, etc. 2) The vast majority of food waste comes from unsold res…

I've always had an issue with the "people should buy ugly food" argument. It strikes me as being somewhat elitist, and I have my doubts that the people making this argument actually follow through themselves and pick the ugly food at the supermarket, or really know if actually makes any difference.

I feel like I am doing the right thing by buying fruit and vegetables instead of processed food. Do I now need to make further consideration and question the impact of my choices because I am ignoring the ugly apples? Humans developed a highly sophisticated discernment of fruit quality for a reason.

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