151–160 of 342 posts
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I like it, I order on my phone before I get to the place and just pick it up. Any reason to like the old way is just nostalgia in my head.
There are pros, but ultimately we’re all still apes, we need human interaction and contact. It can’t be completely replaced with technology.
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Yes - groceries in a small shop are easily 2x the £/calorie in the UK compared to a big superstore.
Are you comparing the cost of strictly identical products or something else? I'd be very curious to have some sources if you have any
I work in this exact space (online grocery retailer in Europe). We're profitable and one of the few companies to be so in the sector - many online divisions are losing money and being bankrolled by the parent company with physical stores. Alternatively, burning VC money. The thing that's wrong with Ocado's technology is that it's ridiculously expensive and tailored for huge FC's (fulfillment centers). The problem wit…
Where are you operating? I live in a dense European city and I don't know a single person who orders groceries online. Smallish shops with bike racks in front of the door are simply too convenient, seems hard to beat. Next few days shopping can easily be done in 15mn on the way back home.
Instead of having to fight with a machine to give back my empty cans/plastic bottles, I can just give the delivery person a crate and get my money back.
Doesn't capture all my groceries, I love biking or walking to a smaller shop on occasion, or if I have a specific craving, but 90% of my groceries is delivery.
I work in this exact space (online grocery retailer in Europe). We're profitable and one of the few companies to be so in the sector - many online divisions are losing money and being bankrolled by the parent company with physical stores. Alternatively, burning VC money. The thing that's wrong with Ocado's technology is that it's ridiculously expensive and tailored for huge FC's (fulfillment centers). The problem wit…
Where are you operating? I live in a dense European city and I don't know a single person who orders groceries online. Smallish shops with bike racks in front of the door are simply too convenient, seems hard to beat. Next few days shopping can easily be done in 15mn on the way back home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you operating? I live in a dense European city and I don't know a single person who orders groceries online. Smallish shops with bike racks in front of the door are simply too convenient, seems hard to beat. Next few days shopping can easily be done in 15mn on the way back home.
> Smallish shops with bike racks in front of the door are simply too convenient Most people don't live in city centers. Because they are the most expensive places to live in.
Sounds like they just put them in the wrong places. > Fenyo added that Kroger’s decision to locate the Ocado centers outside of cities turned out to be a key flaw. > “Ultimately those were hard places to make this model work,” said Fenyo. “You didn’t have enough people ordering, and you had a fair amount of distance to drive to get the orders to them. And so ultimately, these large centers were just not processing en…
I idly wonder if what would actually make sense here is a hybrid model that combines a gigantic fulfillment center with tens of thousands of products located "far" from people, with a large physical footprint and near to road/rail arteries, but with a mid-bandwidth, high-granularity, low-latency physical link to "near" places. For example, imagine you had an upscaled pneumatic tube system (don't get hung up on the ex…
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Had a large-format (for its time) chain store in Canada like that until 1996: https://www.tvo.org/article/what-happened-to-consumers-distr... Basically a catalogue store without shipping to your door.
Argos in the UK was similar. You would go into the store and look up the product in a catalog. Then go to counter and order it, wait 2-5 minutes and they give you the product. I found it quite convenient.
If you pre-order it's waiting at the desk. Very handy for people who can order from the job site on the account and send the lad round to grab it.
And a (relatively) unshittified website too because if jobbing tradies can't use the damn thing because it's too loaded down with ads and bullshit, they just won't.
I work in this exact space (online grocery retailer in Europe). We're profitable and one of the few companies to be so in the sector - many online divisions are losing money and being bankrolled by the parent company with physical stores. Alternatively, burning VC money. The thing that's wrong with Ocado's technology is that it's ridiculously expensive and tailored for huge FC's (fulfillment centers). The problem wit…
Where are you operating? I live in a dense European city and I don't know a single person who orders groceries online. Smallish shops with bike racks in front of the door are simply too convenient, seems hard to beat. Next few days shopping can easily be done in 15mn on the way back home.
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Incredible, they were 75 years ahead of their time.
That kinda stuff is why I'm an incrementalist, as opposed to "Great Man" theories of civilization. A big impressive product or leap-forward is mostly luck and thousands of cascading preconditions on small improvements everywhere else, and often not even the first person to try. It's not hard to imagine that if a fundamentally similar store today that took the world by storm, there would be a profusion of news stories…
Here’s my idea: instant teleportation.
I expect to be credited
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I like it, I order on my phone before I get to the place and just pick it up. Any reason to like the old way is just nostalgia in my head.
There are pros, but ultimately we’re all still apes, we need human interaction and contact. It can’t be completely replaced with technology.