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Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

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Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#201

Post by graemep »

ben_w wrote: post #162
ekianjo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You don't need to be in a city centre for small shops with bike racks. This is village with a population of a bit less than 3000, which I only know about because I have walked East-West across most of the state of Brandenburg (from Słubice in Poland to the city of Brandenburg) and this trains station was a convenient break point: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3459295,14.2800967,3a,60y,14... Here's Aberystwyth, wher…

One of those shows several cars in the photo and a single bike.

The other two show pedestrianised areas, and all three show pedestrians without any indication of how they go there. When I to to similar areas in my town (pop approx 23k) I have drive there, park, and then walk around.

I have several shops within easy walking distance and many people (including me) do walk to them, but quite a few drive. Few bikes (kids mostly) at shops although leisure cycling is VERY popular here.

One of the nice things about an edge of town area with its own identity as a village is we have a lot of local stuff which is walkable and friendly.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#202

Post by rsynnott »

simgt wrote: post #136
karamanolev wrote: post #123

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.

I live literally five minutes walk from a decently sized supermarket, ten minutes from another, and ten minutes on the bus from a great big one. One of my neighbours still gets supermarket delivery. There seems to be some sort of market for it, anyway...

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#203

Post by rsynnott »

ekianjo wrote: post #145
simgt wrote: post #136

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.

You'd get these in inner suburbs, too. And non-inner suburbs, for that matter.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#204

Post by ben_w »

graemep wrote: post #201
ben_w wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be in a city centre for small shops with bike racks. This is village with a population of a bit less than 3000, which I only know about because I have walked East-West across most of the state of Brandenburg (from Słubice in Poland to the city of Brandenburg) and this trains station was a convenient break point: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3459295,14.2800967,3a,60y,14... Here's Aberystwyth, wher…

One of those shows several cars in the photo and a single bike. The other two show pedestrianised areas, and all three show pedestrians without any indication of how they go there. When I to to similar areas in my town (pop approx 23k) I have drive there, park, and then walk around. I have several shops within easy walking distance and many people (including me) do walk to them, but quite a few drive. Few bikes (kids…

> One of those shows several cars in the photo and a single bike.

Yes, and? "Cars are popular" is not a surprising claim that anyone has been contradicting, so far as I can see. (Also, Aberystwyth is tiny enough to get around entirely on foot, and hilly enough that bikers have to be exceptionally fit, and yet despite this, bike racks).

> The other two show pedestrianised areas, and all three show pedestrians without any indication of how they go there.

The Edeka in Briesen is one of the other two, I don't see a pedestrianised area, do you mean the car park owing to the open-air market set up in it?

The other one (Leigh Park) is literally in the middle of a typical UK conurbation with, as is normal in the UK, approximately universal pedestrian access. People can walk there easily from their homes, they can cycle, they can drive, they might even take a bus. One thing they're really not likely to do is come from very far away, because the only people who know about Leigh Park are the adjacent parts of the conurbation and they mostly look up their noses at it because it's poor.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#205

Post by tstrimple »

sokoloff wrote: post #168
chickory3 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in a dense European city and I don't know a single person who orders groceries online. I live in the U.S. and have almost never used a service like Instacart. Also, when I see the item I’m trying to order in Amazon is fulfilled by Whole Foods, I typically don’t buy it, because of the additional cost. I’d rather suffer a small amount of inconvenience to save several dollars on groceries, and often it may mean…

Similar shopping story at our house, but I will observe that Home Depot has made amazing strides into competing with Amazon for delivery of items. They’ll ship me a $10 almost always for free and often next day, sometimes same day. And their prices are competitive in general with Amazon and supplyhouse.com. I don’t know that it’s a great (or even sustainable) offering from their business angle, but I love it as a con…

This but on the other end. I've had literally thousands of pounds of material delivered for free from Home Depot. Sheet good weight adds up very quickly.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#206

Post by rsynnott »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #193
karamanolev wrote: post #123

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…

I see Ocado vans driving up to deliver on the Isle of Skye, which I guess must come from either Fort William or Inverness. I can't imagine it's especially profitable to deliver a bag of food in a refrigerated van to somewhere that's nearly four hours driving each way.

I'd guess that they make a loss on this, but that they accept some losses in exchange for being able to say "we cover the whole country!" This is the case for pretty much any delivery business.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#207

Post by Forgeties79 »

rsynnott wrote: post #202
simgt wrote: post #136

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.

I live literally five minutes walk from a decently sized supermarket, ten minutes from another, and ten minutes on the bus from a great big one. One of my neighbours still gets supermarket delivery. There seems to be some sort of market for it, anyway...

We use Costco delivery at my house because it’s 10-15min each way to go there plus an hour at the place shopping at best (long lines are common). With 2 kids you feel that time especially given how frequently you have to shop for groceries.

It’s a more limited selection but there’s plenty to choose from and I’m done picking out my groceries in five minutes. They magically show up at my door for very little extra cost and I don’t have to bicker with my kids about grabbing a bunch of random stuff either.

I’m not saying you’re wrong for feeling that way, but you’d be surprised how much work it is to go to a grocery store, no matter how close it is. It’s important to think about other factors here.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#208

Post by tstrimple »

georgefrowny wrote: post #161
pjc50 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buried anything is just horrendously expensive. Partly because of other things that are already buried.

Sure, but "we're going to cut the costs of horizontal drilling to a tiny fraction" was the Boring Company's original stated goal. And not all of it does need to be underground. Even if it was a good idea (which I doubt, it's just a idle thought), I don't think there's a practical way to retrofit such a system in existing cities due to the costs, planning and presumably private funding for a non-public network, becaus…

> Sure, but "we're going to cut the costs of horizontal drilling to a tiny fraction" was the Boring Company's original stated goal.

Sounds like the sort of idea a con man would pitch. Oh wait...

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#209

Post by Onavo »

karamanolev wrote: post #123

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…

So who's their target customer? Are we talking about Amazon/Temu scale here?

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#210

Post by imtringued »

squeedles wrote: post #176
sokoloff wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar shopping story at our house, but I will observe that Home Depot has made amazing strides into competing with Amazon for delivery of items. They’ll ship me a $10 almost always for free and often next day, sometimes same day. And their prices are competitive in general with Amazon and supplyhouse.com. I don’t know that it’s a great (or even sustainable) offering from their business angle, but I love it as a con…

I believe that HD (and Lowes) massively subsidizes their delivery ops simply because they don't want to cede the space to Amazon. It allows them to under-stock the stores but still maintain a reasonable range of products. However each time I have ordered, they have delivered a ~$2 part via Fedex, at no extra cost to me. They are a bigger fish than the mom and pop stores but that just means that it will take a little…

Reading these two comments is bizarre from my perspective. How is Amazon competitive with anything? They tend to have higher prices than other online retailers and the intransparent market place system tries to protect shady sellers with product focused reviews instead of seller based reviews. The moment you get even a single fake product or wrong delivery all the perceived savings evaporate at once.

The idea of paying a subscription for the privilege of being scammed sounds ridiculous. The cost of deliveries doesn't magically go down because you're paying a subscription. You're paying for it either way. Either you're overpaying on the subscription because you're not ordering enough or you're overpaying in the form of higher prices that contain the remaining delivery fee.

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