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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

#231

Post by giraffe_lady »

iambateman wrote: post #216

I’m regularly surprised by how important physically picking out groceries is for a large segment of the population. We have done grocery pickup for years but the pickup lanes are almost always empty while dozens of shoppers walk into the store. To me, shopping for groceries by hand is a waste of time but it clearly has some utility for a lot of people. I wonder if that inertia is making traditional grocery shopping s…

Food is what we're made of it and the buying, cooking, eating of it provides a lot of the structure of our lives. I'm skeptical of a view that would have us be even further alienated from these activities.

Shopping for food is important to me because food is important to me, and I have no desire to change this despite how "inefficient" it may be. This attitude has already very nearly optimized out most of the texture of daily life to no benefit that is apparent to me.

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

#232

Post by wiether »

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 have this conversation regularly with friends, family, coworkers...

And I've not yet been able to establish the right criteria to guess how a person is buying their groceries.

Location, age, income, number of people in the household, physical ability...

A single guy living in the city center with good income? Takes his car to go in big supermarket outside the city.

A family with four kids living in the suburbs? Goes everyday in the small shops.

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

#233

Post by opinion3k »

iambateman wrote: post #216

I’m regularly surprised by how important physically picking out groceries is for a large segment of the population. We have done grocery pickup for years but the pickup lanes are almost always empty while dozens of shoppers walk into the store. To me, shopping for groceries by hand is a waste of time but it clearly has some utility for a lot of people. I wonder if that inertia is making traditional grocery shopping s…

I do most the cooking in my house, and the majority of it is meat and produce. I can say from years of experience that it's easy to grab a bad apple if you aren't paying attention or know about food quality, and from the grocery pickers I've seen, they aren't and don't.

A guitarist doesn't just buy some random guitar from amazon - they see it in person and play it. If you cook and care about your food, using a food service just isn't something you'll want to do.

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

#234

Post by simmonmt »

mlrtime wrote: post #72
aerostable_slug wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like not going to the store more. Because tips are important to the income of delivery shoppers, I find that I generally get good produce selections. It might be difficult to transition that particular incentive to robots, but the point is that delivery items don't have to suck. The only thing I really still pick out by hand every time are beef briskets. Pork shoulders tend to be uniform enough that randomly pickin…

>Because tips are important to the income of delivery shoppers, I find that I generally get good produce selections Wait, you tip to get a good selection of produce to be delivered to you? This is very bizarre to me.

I'm not normally a fan of tips, but this seems like a reasonable use of one to me. The picker isn't paid on the shininess of the apple they bring you -- they're paid to pick as quickly as they can from what's on offer. The potential for a tip incentivises them to go beyond that requirement -- to pick the nicest/freshest rather than the most convenient.

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

#235

Post by graemep »

ben_w wrote: post #204
graemep wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The claim was made further up the thread that "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" and I interpreted your photos as supporting that claim.

My point is that it is not "shops with bike racks" that are the alternative to online groceries, it is a mix that definitely involves more use of cars than bikes, plus probably more walking and public transport than bikes too.

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

#236

Post by lazide »

crazygringo wrote: post #196
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 find online grocery shopping shines for heavy and bulky things that are a huge pain to schlep home otherwise, especially stuff that lasts a while. All juices/waters/beers/wines, paper towels, lots of oranges/grapefruits, cleaning products like bleach/detergent, etc. When they carry them up to your fourth-floor door it's just so much easier. The smallish shops are good for stuff you can then easily carry in a bag by…

If you are getting those things anyway, and only need small portions of the other, then why bother?

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

#237

Post by imtringued »

bena wrote: post #198
taeric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad someone made this point. I'm curious how long people think most items in a grocery store last? Just consider the trucks you see stocking them on a daily basis. Typically it is bread and other high flow consumables, no?

Everything. Retail stores are logistics. And part of that is product flow. There are trucks coming in every single day. When you buy an item at a store, that item is deducted from the store's inventory, when that item's stock reaches a certain threshold, an order is immediately placed to the distribution center, and that item is loaded onto a truck and could arrive as soon as that night. There's no reason to keep any…

I would have worded this slightly differently.

The store is the warehouse and the store owner is allowing self service inside the warehouse but not at checkout.

Having robots means you're automating something that your customers would have done for free. The automation is an additional expense and does not reduce your operating costs.

The online grocery business model only works for two types of customers: those who are willing to pay a premium for convenience and those who need some specialty products that local grocers don't sell.

The first market is a competitor to doordash, this either means automating the in-store pickup or the delivery itself.

The second market is actually a drag on your local grocery stores. You don't want to carry niche products that are only interesting to a tiny portion of your market e.g. products for rare food intolerances, groceries for expats. If you want to carry them in your store, you'd want the customer to preorder them themselves, so you know exactly how much you need and then make them pick them up.

Basically the correct business model is in-house doordash (or B2B doordash) combined with preorders.

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

#238

Post by VLM »

wiether wrote: post #232
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 have this conversation regularly with friends, family, coworkers... And I've not yet been able to establish the right criteria to guess how a person is buying their groceries. Location, age, income, number of people in the household, physical ability... A single guy living in the city center with good income? Takes his car to go in big supermarket outside the city. A family with four kids living in the suburbs? Goe…

I've found two very general personality criteria for online ordering.

Planners. The people who have a meal plan in Google Calendar for the next week and rarely have to "grab one thing on the way home from the store". The people who literally have no idea what they're eating on Thursday will go to the store today or tomorrow, who knows what they'll buy.

Multitaskers. The people who do their grocery shopping on the couch while not really watching TV, or similar downtime when its job #2. I used to shop online while theoretically cooking. It'll be five minutes until this is done I'll spend a couple minutes looking in the fridge for eggs / milk / etc and add to next weeks order.

A specific criteria I've found is people in general don't trust the delivery services for non-hyperprocessed food. I can trust a sealed bag of oreos is like every other mass produced food-adjacent substance. I want to select my own roast from whats on the shelf or my own apples. So people who only eat processed food products that come in plastic tend to like online ordering, people who mostly eat more natural food tend to dislike online ordering.

You have to know people pretty well to determine their project management style and their diet.

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

#239

Post by marcosdumay »

georgefrowny wrote: post #217
tstrimple wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

To be fair, he did do that for kilos to orbit via reusable rocket, so there was a moment when everyone went "hmm maybe there is a TBM equivalent of the Falcon 9". But presumably it turned out that actually Herrenknecht and Hitachi aren't stupid, whereas, say, Boeing had been leaving opportunity for radical cost reduction on the table.

There existed a well known path for reducing costs to orbit, and the market was non-competitive and highly non-optimized for decades. One single company made a single experiment in that path, and it was somewhere on the middle between success and failure.

That's not the case for drilling. The Boring Company has no clear proposition about how they would reduce their costs.

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

#240

Post by wing-_-nuts »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #207
rsynnott wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>They magically show up at my door for very little extra cost

I find tipping for grocery delivery adds pretty significantly to the cost.

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