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Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

erniesgrocery.com

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Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#41

Post by openczun »

billybob wrote: post #10
rsbrown wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on, my friend. To highlight a few items: "Excellent interface" We have built a streamlined interface that is uniquely designed to handle grocery shopping. We believe that there is a fundamental difference in shopping for groceries online and the way we shop for other consumer merchandise (such as clothes or books). Being fast, intuitive and discoverable are the overarching goals. "you should seriously consider d…

Actually, I like the fact that this isn't delivery. I would expect to pay more for that, and driving to the grocery store would be no big deal if I didn't have to go in. One thing that could make things speedier would be something like an RFID tag in my car that gets scanned as I enter the parking lot, so you'd know what customers were about to pick up their groceries. (You'd have to carefully consider the privacy im…

Having worked with warehouses and warehousing systems, this is actually a real problem.

A normal non-refrigerated warehouse can pick items (grab from the shelf) well in advance of the "pick up" time for carriers, so orders are ready to go when the truck arrives.

In Ernie's model, it becomes a challenge having items ready when customers arrive, yet minimize the amount of time perishables are out of refrigeration.

This could be addressed a few ways : 1. Asking the customer roughly when they expect to pick up their orders 2. Staging orders in refrigerated and non-refrigerated sections for quick final assembly at pick-up 3. A mechanism like you've described to give some advanced warning to the warehouse.

Very interesting stuff indeed -- I'm envisioning some wicked cool cross and upselling opportunities with punchfork.com's API.

Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#43

Post by tooba »

rsbrown wrote: post #40
retube wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thoughtful responses. I am looking at this from a very UK perspective, so much of what I've said maybe (and indeed sounds like it is) not relevant to the US. Over here UK supermarkets have matured their online businesses very well. It's no more expensive than in-store and delivery is free to cheap depending on how narrow a delievry window you can handle. Plus of course the US is much larger geographically and much mo…

As I've done research for Ernie's, I have been extremely impressed with what the UK grocers have accomplished (led by Tesco). If I had to pick a single grocery supply chain as our "gold standard" to emulate, it would definitely be Tesco.

I'm in the UK and would love click and collect groceries. Shopping online is the easy bit. Waiting around for a two hour delivery window is the problem especially when I drive past the store on the way home.

Something like Ernie's would be ideal. It'd even be worthwhile for collecting a few day to day items. I'm surprised Tesco hasn't done this already.

Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#44

Post by DanielStraight »

rsbrown wrote: post #34
dmix wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. I never had a problem with rude checkout staff and I found that this site stressed that very heavily. The reason I use Grocery Gateway (our local online grocery store w/ delivery) is because I live in a city and don't need a car. So I get all of my non-produce stuff delivered. It's $8 for delivery vs a $15 taxi + the time it would take for me to get there and back.

Keep in mind that you are a patron of a niche offering. I'm happy that it works well for you, but grocery shopping still sucks for the vast majority of shoppers in the United States. Ernie's aims to address that need.

I'm wondering on what you base the claim that grocery shopping sucks for the "vast majority" of shoppers. Honestly, I can't remember a single time in my life someone has complained to me about grocery shopping.

Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#45

Post by halostatue »

rsbrown wrote: post #34
dmix wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. I never had a problem with rude checkout staff and I found that this site stressed that very heavily. The reason I use Grocery Gateway (our local online grocery store w/ delivery) is because I live in a city and don't need a car. So I get all of my non-produce stuff delivered. It's $8 for delivery vs a $15 taxi + the time it would take for me to get there and back.

Keep in mind that you are a patron of a niche offering. I'm happy that it works well for you, but grocery shopping still sucks for the vast majority of shoppers in the United States. Ernie's aims to address that need.

How much of it sucks because of grocery shopping in general vs. being in food deserts[1]? I also happen to live in the same place served by Grocery Gateway, but stopped using it years ago because the service fee increased and the selection decreased. On the other hand, I subscribe to the delivery of an organic vegetable basket every two weeks.

Toronto is not a food desert by any means, with lots of fresh fruit and vegetable vendors on nearly every major street (where I live, there's three in close proximity; where I used to live, there were five or six).

That said, I think the concept described here is very useful for a particular class of shopping: that which one would do on the way home from work. Yesterday, I had to pick some stuff up from one of our local stores on the way home (Planet Organic); my wife made the shopping list. If she had been able to make the shopping list directly with Planet Organic and I would have been able to just go pick it up without spending an additional ~25 minutes wandering around the (small) store, I would have been home about 40 minutes earlier than I was.

One of the problems of modern grocery shopping is you're typically doing the shopping for at least a week at a time; Ernie's may allow your customers to shop for food more frequently in smaller batches, getting fresher produce every time. I'd push that concept forward.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#46

Post by vegashacker »

billybob wrote: post #12
retube wrote: post #11

This is an interesting concept. But I see a couple of issues: - You need physical stores. These take a lot of money and expertise to set up and run. And to expand/scale in any meaningful way will take a LOT of money. Plus of course you've got the added expense of having to actually do the shopping on behalf of your customers (ie walk round your inventory and fill the basket). Kind of the opposite to the Ikea model. A…

"Your stores are going to have to be as big as a supermarket to really be of use to people." Not necessarily. You could make more efficient use of space if you don't have to arrange the store to be customer-friendly. "I don't even need to go to the store then, they just get delivered to my front door. Or do supermarkets not do this in the US?" Most places, no. Where they do, it's more expensive. "Personally I've neve…

The "suggested recipes" idea is the rare kind of upsell that I would love to be offered. I never know what to buy at the grocery store, so I always end up buying the same 20 or so items.

Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#47

Post by rsbrown »

halostatue wrote: post #45
rsbrown wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that you are a patron of a niche offering. I'm happy that it works well for you, but grocery shopping still sucks for the vast majority of shoppers in the United States. Ernie's aims to address that need.

How much of it sucks because of grocery shopping in general vs. being in food deserts[1]? I also happen to live in the same place served by Grocery Gateway, but stopped using it years ago because the service fee increased and the selection decreased. On the other hand, I subscribe to the delivery of an organic vegetable basket every two weeks. Toronto is not a food desert by any means, with lots of fresh fruit and ve…

Excellent feedback, thanks for it.

Your "quick stop on the way home from work" is our number one use case. I'm very happy it appeals to you.

Regarding food deserts, Ernie's is a great way of addressing this issue and we are pitching a major regional supermarket chain about it.

Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#48

Post by halostatue »

retube wrote: post #15
jneal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the south east of the US (where this store is hoping to open) and there are no grocery stores that allow you to order online here. The only option is to go to the store and shop for yourself. You are right that you could spend 40 minutes filling up your online basket, but what if you could save your basket and re-order it the next time you "go shopping." Thus you fill up your basket with the items you alrea…

From the sounds of things US supermarkets do not have the online and delivery presence that they do in the UK. I reckon the 4 major supermarkets here deliver to 98% of the population, same price as in-store with free delivery (hourly delivery spots do cost a bit extra though). So maybe there is a market for this across the pond. But then you've got the risk that the US supermarkets get their act together (and really…

There's a bit of a market. I live where Grocery Gateway runs (Toronto). It went well and I even used it periodically for the first few years, but they ran into the problem that their costs (gas) went up dramatically and they had to make a number of changes.

Ultimately, they were bought out by one of the local chains (Longos), who reduced their inventory even further and raised the delivery fee higher, so I haven't shopped with them in years.

The biggest problem with grocery delivery in North America is going to be distance. Toronto is about 43km east-west by about 21km north-south, and the GTA is probably 100km east-west and 50km north-south. It's really hard to cover those distances in a time-effective manner, and refrigeration trucks are expensive to buy/lease and maintain; the 401 running through Toronto is one of the busiest highways in the world. You'd need to have the ability for a truck to be able to pull into any of your chain's stores and restock, and there you might run into problems because (a) not all stores are company stores (they may be franchisees; I'm not sure how common this is with grocery stores) and (b) the stores, even if not franchises, tend to do a lot of market segmentation meaning that you may not have all the same products because the neighbourhood has different needs.

Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#49

Post by rsbrown »

DanielStraight wrote: post #44
rsbrown wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that you are a patron of a niche offering. I'm happy that it works well for you, but grocery shopping still sucks for the vast majority of shoppers in the United States. Ernie's aims to address that need.

I'm wondering on what you base the claim that grocery shopping sucks for the "vast majority" of shoppers. Honestly, I can't remember a single time in my life someone has complained to me about grocery shopping.

I don't doubt you, but I've been doing market research, interviews, surveys and informal outreach for ten months straight on this issue. I assure you, in many markets, this is a serious pain point for consumers.

Not everyone, though -- some people genuinely enjoy the grocery shopping experience. For them, the supermarkets will always be there.

Re: Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

#50

Post by halostatue »

nihilocrat wrote: post #17

Here in Montreal (perhaps also in other large cities) I can order groceries online from any of the major supermarkets and have them delivered to me (mind you, I don't have a car) for a reasonable minimum order value and a mere $2-3 extra. Maybe you are intentionally not targetting these cities, otherwise the idea is not really new at all. You want to see a grumpy clerk? Go to Switzerland and forget to put the little…

Italy, too. I didn't know that's what we were supposed to do when we went into a supermarket to buy a couple of peaches (or something) on vacation last year.
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