Interestingly, the article does not take into account prices. I thought about using online food services, but found that prices are about 20-50 % higher than in a supermarket, so it is supermarket for me.
Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
181–190 of 488 posts
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#182It'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…
> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food
It's said to be 31% of the retail and consumer food in the US[1]. While that is enormous, I don't think it necessarily should be considered unacceptable. The food supply chain is a system we want to have a lot of slack in.
So what level of food utilization would we have to have for someone to deliberately buy a very bruised apple at full price? I don't know, but I'm guessing it's too high to prevent a food security issue in a crisis.
[1] - https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/food-loss-and-waste
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a great marketing gimmick that some companies have made, but it's largely false. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...
Thank you, I remember reading this as a tweet but couldn’t find it (twitter search is.... lacking)
when you mentioned a tweet i had a feeling it would be by dr sarah taber, and she was indeed quoted in the vox post. i highly recommend following her on twitter; i have learnt a startling amount about food production and the realities of farming in america.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#184It'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…
Even if quality is there, how ripe do you want? Are you going to use those avocados tonight, or later in the week? Do you like green bananas or ones that are turning brown? Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale today?" method of shopping! Even packaged goods are tough. When I'm in a store, I know quickly which product I want. I may not remember the brand name, but I can scan the shelf and find it.…
Because they instead decided to invest their tech money into autonomous floor cleaning robots, if the Giant stores near Harrisburg are any indication.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#185It'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…
Oh the automatic substitution non organic to organic is not much of an issue. But I have had food items like oatmeal auto replace with ice or a sponge. I don't know what is worse honestly the fact ai is so bad or that a real person will buy the insane replacement.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes sense in economics 101. The reality is, the Instacart guy doesn't give a shit and will provide bruising as part of the service of schlepping your crap for you. The in-store shoppers don't really care either. The explanation that you're providing is really a rationalization for paying more to procure an inferior product. You're always going to have wastage of perishable items. It's much cheaper and sensical to a…
> The explanation that you're providing is really a rationalization for paying more to procure an inferior product the explanation I gave is literally for paying less, so you missed the point of it, and you are then blaming econ 101 for your lack of understanding. And you are mixing in other factors that econ 101 covers, but the point of econ 101 is to learn to separate different factors.
The Instacart guy isn't a magic elf. The $0.05 you save on rotten fruit is offset by a $0.50 in labor.
As investors tire of setting money on fire, that will become more apparent, just as it did with Uber as prices went up and quality went down.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon does this sort of direct fulfillment under the Prime Now name. They don't do a great job of keeping a consistent set of things in stock, though. Kroger brands also do this. But you can still get inventory problems - something the system thinks is in stock on Monday at noon when you place the order can be gone by Tuesday at 6 when they're packing your order for you. Both of those have been way better in my expe…
> Amazon does this sort of direct fulfillment under the Prime Now name. Do they? When I order, the food comes from my local Whole Foods in a passenger vehicle, and I get the same OOS issues as Instacart. How is the process any different than how Instacart works?
I guess this varies by location. Prime Now for me (in Paris) comes from one location in the city in a delivery van.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#188Besides cost, I like looking around and a trip to the store can be enjoyable on its own. Might see another store I want to stop at, get some nice views, or see a nice old car, and it's a good chance to have some thoughts without distractions. It's also the only time I really end up listening to local radio.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#189Somewhere the former CEO of Webvan[1] is rolling around laughing on the floor.
Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online
#190I actively mistrust grocery delivery, because between when I place my order for items in stock and the hours-to-day when they pick my items off the shelf, I'm seeing on average 10-20% of my items being listed as "out of stock" or being offered inappropriate substitutes. This issue is compounded by the delivery service I'm using refusing to handle "replacement items" requests — if 'garlic' is out and they offer 'garli…
I've had Instacart workers make pretty good substitutions that weren't even in the app's automated list of replacements. They marked my original item OOS and added the new items as an "adjustment", so these judgement calls are at least something that is possible for them to do. The issue is that YMMV with the worker you get on any particular occasion.
To clarify, my negative experiences with Instacart were restricted to the shopping website/app experience (which is no better or worse than any other); the Instacart shoppers have always made intelligent decisions on the ground.