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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

#251

Post by roryirvine »

lazide wrote: post #236
crazygringo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because otherwise you'd have to do a lot more planning in advance.

For instance, I called in to the patisserie this morning on a whim to treat myself to a pain au chocolat for breakfast. And I think I fancy cheese for dinner, so after work I'll nip out to the deli for some stilton and the greengrocer for walnuts and figs to go with it. I've already got fancy crackers and some good port from my last online delivery so that's everything I need for dinner.

I'm used to being able to pick stuff up according to what I feel like eating on the day. Yeah, it wouldn't be a huge quality of life reduction to have to plan meals in advance but why bother if I don't have to?

Plus, when I'm working from home, it keeps me from being entirely sedentary on a miserable, drizzly winter's day when I might not otherwise have bothered leaving the house, so it has physical & mental health benefits too.

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

#252

Post by VLM »

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 worked at a food store as a student a long time ago. Remarkably few customers are weekly. We did sell entire cartloads of food on certain days at certain times but it's pretty rare. Most of the people walking in will have to skip a meal that day if they did not stop at the store for just one thing. Then add some impulse purchases. Most people walk out with one grocery bag, some walk out with only one item. Where I lived, most of this behavior was poor planning not financial. Most of the items were pretty nice, not the cheapest. People who can't plan ahead to have enough eggs or whatever will never plan ahead enough for the enormous latency of very slow delivery. Those eggs they're buying, will be cooking mere minutes after purchase not hours.

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

#253

Post by crazygringo »

lazide wrote: post #236
crazygringo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why bother with which? I don't understand the question.

Delivery is for less frequent things that last much longer.

Local ships are for more frequent things that spoil quickly.

And adding the heavier/bulkier things to my local trips, even in smaller quantities, just makes the bags too heavy and unwieldy in the end. I only have two hands. Plus it's way more expensive to buy paper towels as individual rolls than in packs of six.

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

#254

Post by cgriswald »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

Notable that the reasons for failure to meet benchmarks was that the locations were too far away, and that they are moving to the “Micro-Fulfillment Center” approach that Amazon is doing at Whole Foods. This is exactly what everyone predicted when Amazon bought WF - turn it into a grocery FC. That makes sense to me. Feels like we’re going to have warehouse scale vending machines in cities, and delivery bots taking th…

This isn’t what Amazon has done at least here on the Peninsula. My WF orders come from Brisbane just like my overnight shipping and Amazon Fresh orders do. Before that they were coming from San Jose, possibly from a WF there but there are closer WF stores in both directions and none in Brisbane.

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

#255

Post by VLM »

All delivery services so far, have been partial emulations of a concierge service including the high cost, but have made the user suffer thru the friction instead of the human concierge.

I don't see a way around this using mere technology. Either the service quality will have to be low, or the cost will have to be prohibitively high, or the people providing the service will have to be very poor.

We have solutions going back centuries that work. If you need more than an occasional concierge service you hire a chef as an employee. At some point it makes more sense to hire a part time chef than to pay enormous extra fees for giant shopping robots. Perhaps the economic decline from AI will make the idea of having house servants more acceptable to the very few people still having an income. Most strategies to replace high labor cost people with technology miss the point of long term permanent economic decline. We don't have a problem of too many financially successful people LOL if anything the problem is a severe lack of them.

Its kind of like cars. You have to unperson poor people who know how to drive if you want success with computer driven cars. This is the same concept but for hiring a servant to cook.

Also its very hard to scale royalty. If only the local equivalent of royalty can afford to pay to make the effort required to shop and cook and drive disappear, its going to be hard to dotcom scale that to billions of customers if there's only a couple multimillionaires who don't care about the price.

Trying to automate food shopping is like trying to go back to full service gas stations. Nobody wants it so its an uphill battle to sell.

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

#256

Post by criddell »

bob1029 wrote: post #133
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…

The grocery business has razor thin margins. There is no dry sponge remaining to absorb this kind of massive fixed cost. The business is highly variable. I think scaling up would be the only way out of this problem. Scaling down only makes it worse.

Or you sell every bit of data you collect.

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

#257

Post by didntknowyou »

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…

love ocado purely for the reason it's cheaper than other services. i suspect they are subsidising each order to build long term customer behaviour but it's a gamble when customers can eadily switch as the moat is purely pricing

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

#258

Post by lotsofpulp »

imtringued wrote: post #210
squeedles wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 payi…

> The moment you get even a single fake product or wrong delivery all the perceived savings evaporate at once.

I’ve been buying on Amazon for 20 years, and I just avoid high value items. It’s great as an AliExpress with an easy return policy. If I get a fake or whatever, I return it or I toss it.

For higher value items, I go to other retailers, such as Costco.

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

#259

Post by socksy »

danielbln wrote: post #190
jack_tripper wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this expensive after you factor in the extra margins and delivery costs?

Well, ish. German grocery prices are still quite low, comparatively. People use the delivery services not for full weekend shopping, more if you get home late and the fridge is empty, or a public holiday is coming up etc. Still, they are popular.

Also, anecdotally they are more popular amongst less price sensitive people with disposable incomes, where paying for the convenience is worth it.

But also, definitely not the Ocado model.

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

#260

Post by mikkupikku »

jon-wood wrote: post #195
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 think there's a space for something in between Ocado and Uber Eats, in the 2010s I worked for a startup where you could book an Ocado style delivery slot for the next day from a bunch of different butchers, bakers, etc and then we'd send a van round to collect from all of them and deliver it to you. Annoyingly they ran out of money just a little bit too soon, I'm pretty sure if they'd managed to hold out until 2020…

VC reinvents the milk man (who used to deliver much more than just milk.)
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