Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by perl4ever » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #473

perl4ever wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've noticed recently is they are getting quite fast and loose with the "natural flavoring" terminology. At first, I thought that something with Sucralose was considered to be naturally flavored because sweetener isn't a flavoring according to some legal definition. But then I saw something with artificial flavor listed in the ingredients, so my revised hypothesis is it must be legal now to say something co…

Sucralose is lab made, but stevia is not, so there’s that. And is lab made vanilla or mint considered natural flavoring?

I've speculated that vanillin is the "artificial flavoring" on many ingredient lists, but I never see it specified explicitly.

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

#482

Post by claudiawerner » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

joeyjojo wrote: post #370

crazygringo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

>Humans developed a highly sophisticated discernment of fruit quality for a reason.

Humans also developed a highly sophisticated way of absorbing ideas and images of their environment, some of which portray ideal fruits and vegetables as examples of what should be eaten, and anything outside that norm which was passed down by parents and through the media should not be eaten, or at least looked upon with suspicion.

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

#483

Post by ggggtez » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #298

ggggtez wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you are making an unstated assumption that food being thrown away is a bad thing. I'm not convinced. Let's say a farmer wanted to reduce foodwaste. So they only sold perfect fruit that they knew would get bought. That would drive up the prices of those perfect fruit AND there would be less fruit for sale in total. Therefore, some amount of food waste should be acceptable to ensure the best outcome for e…

> Let's say a farmer wanted to reduce foodwaste. So they only sold perfect fruit that they knew would get bought. Selling only perfect fruit is literally foodwaste right there. Fruits don't grow all perfect. If most of the fruit you see in store looks flawless, that literally means that most of the fruit harvested was either sold to another company or thrown away.

>Selling only perfect fruit is literally foodwaste right there.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you haven't exactly explained why "food waste" is a bad thing. I've given a reason why it could be considered a good thing: it can reduce the cost and increase total food that is purchased.

For an absurd example, see the "Eat your vegetables, because there are children starving in China" argument. Just because it would be nice if every hungry person had food, doesn't mean that letting any food go to waste is necessarily immoral by itself.

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

#484

Post by willcipriano » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:40 PM UTC

eatYourFood wrote: post #453

willcipriano wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The 25 vs 15 dollars issue means their business sucks unless they have a value add on top? If you were getting 15 lemons per week, maybe contract the vendor and try to address the issue?

> The 25 vs 15 dollars issue means their business sucks unless they have a value add on top?

As I am buying "less desirable produce" (from what I can tell it all came from normal cases that a restaurant would order, I think this fools some people as they aren't used to seeing produce that still has dirt on it and is less presentable like that) I would expect more of it for my money, not less. I understand they have to pay for shipping but it's not as if I don't have to go to the grocery store anyway, maybe I just don't see the value proposition, for us it just wasn't there.

>If you were getting 15 lemons per week, maybe contract the vendor and try to address the issue?

Even if the product was more evenly distributed it wasn't enough for it to provide value for me. That point was just the final nail in the coffin.

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

#485

Post by hanniabu » Fri, May 29, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

xapata wrote: post #444

hanniabu wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, I figured that stuff would have been included in the barcode. There must be some way to track this automatically because I doubt stores are managing their inventory on tracking this manually in 2020.

Ever done store inventory? It's one of life's little joys.

I've heard of them but I figured it was a periodic thing to make sure the stores automatic accounting aligns with actual stock to adjust for stolen, damaged, or misplaced product. I didn't think it was for checking expectations.

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

#486

Post by somebrody » Sun, May 31, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #386

somebrody wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not order it in the first place Which was OP's conclusion so I'm not sure why understanding the nuances of the pricing is helpful

Nope. The OP was over-generalizing it as inherent to online grocery shopping, the reply pointed out they just need to pick a different seller.

They wanted items from Costco at a fair price. They didn't want items from a "different seller", whatever that would mean. But, sure, pretend that Instacart is doing a good job in the free market or whatever. Everyone else knows that it isn't the right way to do it

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

#487

Post by noetic_techy » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #199

noetic_techy wrote: post #147

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…

Eh, why bother? Move the consist goods online and have corner grocers with the fruit and meat. They are probably only 15% of the grocery store

Good idea. That would be ideal.

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

#488

Post by simonebrunozzi » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

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…

Check out Imperfect Foods (I am not affiliated; simply a happy customer) - they send you a box with "imperfect" food that otherwise would have gone to waste.

There are also other similar companies doing this.