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

Post by kyteland » Wed, May 27, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #197

I would happily purchase all non-produce and non-meat items online. The problem is that produce and meats are not produced with a consistent quality. A steak that expires tomorrow and an apple with a bruise on it are both commonly found in grocery stores and less valuable than the price would indicate. Normally these would just be left on the shelves to expire. Your strawberries may be nice and firm or they could be…

Post by mattkrause » Wed, May 27, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

stormdennis wrote: post #167

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 always check use-by and best before dates. When milk can have a date that's over a week away, I really hate it when someone buys milk that's use by tomorrow. Same for for bread, cheese, eggs, butter, fruit and veg, any number of items. Supermarkets naturally want to sell you the soon to expire stuff so how can you trust their pickers? The answer might be buyers and deliverers independent from the shops.

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 27, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

Post by wool_gather » Wed, May 27, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

thejynxed wrote: post #192

alleyshack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't always respect this. I've had multiple Instacart shoppers replace items without marking them as replacements, including replacing some of them with things I explicitly indicated I did not want as replacements.

A company I do contract work for banned Instacart from one of their local stores entirely due to customer complaints to store management about unapproved substitutions.

Post by wool_gather » Wed, May 27, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #32

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 would hope that grocery stores become warehouses and the only people allowed in are delivery. You could redesign the entire stores to optimize for this which could reduce the likeliness of damaged goods. Amazon would be in a good position to do this (the Whole Foods near me already has part of it set aside for something like this).