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Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

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Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#251

Post by ggggtez »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #218
wl wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste. But I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised apple. If I'm making pie or apple sauce, I'll seek out bruised apples—and pay less for them. Paying normal prices for bruised apples? No thanks.

> Paying normal prices for bruised apples? No thanks. And because arranging different pricing for all the foodstuffs that look less than perfect costs more than profit on these items, into the bin goes perfectly good food.

It seems like you are making an unstated assumption that food being thrown away is a bad thing.

I'm not convinced. Let's say a farmer wanted to reduce foodwaste. So they only sold perfect fruit that they knew would get bought. That would drive up the prices of those perfect fruit AND there would be less fruit for sale in total.

Therefore, some amount of food waste should be acceptable to ensure the best outcome for everyone.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#252

Post by gurumeditations »

hbhakhra wrote: post #208
bane wrote: post #48

We decided to order a bunch of things from Costco a few weeks ago through instacart. Actually we decided to do it before then, but the site was broken for a bit. It was crazy expensive. Not only the delivery fee, the tip, etc. But every item was marked up significantly over the in-store price, with no indication that was the case. We even pulled out some old receipts to verify this price difference. Apparently part o…

We had the same experience as well. When lockdown started, we did a couple of Instacart orders and recommended it to people, until I found out about the stacked charges. If it was just a delivery fee + tip, I'm fine with that, even a transparent fixed percentage. The deception and realizing how much the per-item surcharge + delivery fee + tip was coming out to made me stop using them. Recently I've been using curb-si…

They’re not allowed to take tips and are paid garbage wages. Don’t get too excited.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#253

Post by sjg007 »

tzs wrote: post #62
elmerfud wrote: post #2

It'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…

I don't know how standardized layout is within a chain, but at my local Walmart superstore the area immediately to the right of the entrance closest to the grocery section is produce, baked goods, and deli. Just past that is the meat section. Immediately to the left of that entrance is check out, starting with a bunch of self-checkout stations. This makes it quite reasonable to do a quick extraction mission for produ…

I agree, I've actually found that Walmart has been the best online grocery experience. My local supermarket is Ok but HyVee has been wildly inconsistent.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#254

Post by spaceisballer »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #244
monadic2 wrote: post #235

I have had so many bad experiences with instacart: * shopper buying yams rather than potatoes (note: this was not a replacement, they seemed to genuinely believe they had bought potatoes.) * shopper going to checkout before I can suggest a better replacement for an item. * shopper buys obviously moldy fruit. * shopper buys five roaster chickens as a replacement for five cornish hens. * shopper gives up really easily…

I find it hard to believe instacarts model is still the best way of doing online grocery shopping in America... In the UK there's Ocado that has their own warehouses and most of the selection and packing is automated. If there are replacements you're told in advance and can accept or reject the replacement Most of the main supermarket chains have followed suit and have similar services

There are other options, we have Peapod in my area. It’s the same stuff in grocery stores but from the warehouse. This pandemic has them overburdened and I can’t seem to find a delivery time. I tried Instacart once and the shopper was great but with so many things being out of stock I end up having to go out anyway. That plus the markup on all the items (the receipt was $20 less than what Instacart charged me, not including fees and delivery and tip).

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#255

Post by bpyne »

thejynxed wrote: post #202
bpyne wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thought about delivery-only stores. Honestly, I'm in support of it. I hate driving. But grocery stores are not up to the task right now with order and delivery systems.

Or enough people willing to do the actual delivering for the usual shit pay.

No doubt. Even if we increased the pay or found another way to attract people as deliverers, grocery stores need to solve inventory and order picking. They won't keep delivery customers when they can't fulfill 40% of items that a customer requests for delivery. For anything they can fulfill, people picking orders need to understand acceptable substitutions without having to be trained by the customer like an ML system.

My family used grocery delivery for 5 years with a lot of satisfaction. We had two people picking and delivering. One of the two people was a former chef and the other grew up on a family farm. They selected produce and made substitutions on an expert level with little feedback from us. We paid $5 for delivery and they never accepted tips.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#256

Post by yellowapple »

skywhopper wrote: post #98
kerkeslager wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am highly skeptical. The author of that article makes a lot of claims, but doesn't really go into a lot of how the information was obtained. I'm not denying there's some marketing involved here--I'm sure there is. But there's also some element of truth here. I've worked at a food co-op and they definitely composted a lot of food. In the article's logic, that's not food waste, but I think that feeding people is stil…

That article is an interview with an expert in the field. You can look up Sarah Taber and find more information and citations. Just because there's not a Works Cited list attached to a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made up. You realize that crops have to have organic material to grow, right? Using leftovers, spoilage, and damaged produce from the previous crop is how agriculture is traditionally done. If farme…

> Just because there's not a Works Cited list attached to a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made up.

For all I know it is just made up. Maybe if media companies got in a better habit of providing citations they'd be more trustworthy.

> If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops.

Which, from what I've seen first-hand growing up in the rural Central Valley (and what I continue to see first-hand in other rural areas) is exactly what's happening. Those crops ain't being composted with any sort of regularity (I'm sure some of it might be, since store-bought compost has to come from somewhere, but I'm highly skeptical of the idea that the farms themselves are doing it).

The nugget of truth in the article is that they ain't getting "thrown away", either. Rather, they're typically getting sold to companies using them for raw ingredients on a more industrial scale (think canneries and baked-goods factories and TV dinner makers and such) and/or (more recently) companies that specifically market "ugly produce", and whatever's left over from that often ends up being animal food (whether through manufacture - e.g. dog/cat food - or fed directly to e.g. livestock).

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#257

Post by gnulinux »

bane wrote: post #48

We decided to order a bunch of things from Costco a few weeks ago through instacart. Actually we decided to do it before then, but the site was broken for a bit. It was crazy expensive. Not only the delivery fee, the tip, etc. But every item was marked up significantly over the in-store price, with no indication that was the case. We even pulled out some old receipts to verify this price difference. Apparently part o…

This was exactly my experience. Last week I suddenly needed a toiler plunger in the middle of the work day. I can't leave to go Target to get that, so I ordered it online. There is a $30 minimum you can spend to get it delivered (doesn't include service fee, tip, charges etc). I said fine and got duct tape and aluminum foil as well. It was the most expensive shopping I did since forever. A toilet plunger, bunch of duct tape, aluminum foil all added up to $50 including fee, tip etc. Thanks but no thanks. I'm not cheaping out on anything but I'm not gonna pay $50 for something I can pay $15-$20 on Amazon or in the shop.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#258

Post by Izkata »

ghaff wrote: post #231
treis wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The current big problem with online food shopping is that it's being done by sending low-wage people into ordinary supermarkets. This is inefficient, but until recently this was a niche market. I agree. People definitely want online/delivery grocery shopping. The problem thus far has been product misses on giving the customer what they want. Ordering online today is too much of a crap shoot. You'll get 80% of what y…

If I could have "near-perfect" online shopping for a $5-10 delivery charge... Sure. The one time I've really tried it was when I had a broken foot and doing a full grocery shopping was a PITA. So I used delivery. I'd get most of what I needed with some questionable substitutions. But that was mostly OK because driving to the store and picking up a few things in a shoulder bag wasn't a big deal. Just a full grocery sh…

You're describing what Peapod always was for me, for the three years I had it. I'd still be using it if they hadn't stopped delivering here; they spoiled me to the point I'm not even going to try Instacart/etc.

The one exception was that you couldn't choose your own substitutions, but you could toggle whether to get the substitute or just not get that item (so at least you don't waste food if it's something you really don't want).

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#259

Post by zitterbewegung »

monadic2 wrote: post #235

I have had so many bad experiences with instacart: * shopper buying yams rather than potatoes (note: this was not a replacement, they seemed to genuinely believe they had bought potatoes.) * shopper going to checkout before I can suggest a better replacement for an item. * shopper buys obviously moldy fruit. * shopper buys five roaster chickens as a replacement for five cornish hens. * shopper gives up really easily…

I've ordered items from Starbucks and when I walk in to get the order they state that the item is not in stock.

The ability for grocers to know exactly what is in stock and what isn't in realtime isn't something they are designed to do and isn't a trivial ask.

Re: Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

#260

Post by noneeeed »

It's interesting watching discussions about this from the UK. The last stat I can find was that around 25% of people do some or all of their grocery shopping online. Most of the time it works really well.

Here, most of the supermarkets now do their online fullfillment from warehouses, not the shop floor, using purpose built delivery vehicals. One, Ocado (who are doing amazing tech work with robots and planning) are entirely online, while also whitelabelling their logistics for another supermarket.

On the whole the quality is perfect, it's not "bottom of the barrel", fruit is fresh, things tend to have long dates on them. While you do get substitutions from time to time, they seem to have got rarer as they have got better at predicting demand.

The main downside for my wife, who insists on shopping in person, is that you don't get the really good deals on stuff, as it's always on the short-dated stuff they want to get off the shelves.

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