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

Post by tonyarkles » Thu, May 28, 2020, 1:05 PM UTC

retsibsi wrote: post #416

gregmac wrote: post #352

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I think substitutions are way, way more complex than that. Just from my own experience: I eat low carb (keto). Recently I had vanilla yogurt (22g carbs) substituted for Greek yogurt (5g carbs), which I basically can't eat. There's a handful of other things where the carbs can vary wildly between brands such as sausages, salad dressing, and BBQ sauce. Not to mention that many people think the "low fat" version of anyt…

Maybe they can just give the customer more direct control. It wouldn't require anything complicated: simply allow me to select any substitutes I would be happy to accept. (Make this optional, and leave the current system as the default.) If they want to make it easier, they can give me the list of items they would consider as substitutes, and allow me to add/remove items. And they can remember the choices I've made i…

Post by OJFord » Thu, May 28, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

tallanvor wrote: post #460

OJFord wrote: post #73

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For the benefit of any other perplexed non-Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_carrot#%22Baby-cut%22_car...

They are certainly not limited to America. You can buy them in many countries - they're common in the stores here in Norway, for example.

Post by jaclaz » Thu, May 28, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

carlmr wrote: post #411

joeyjojo wrote: post #370

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I've always had an issue with the "people should buy ugly food" argument. It strikes me as being somewhat elitist, and I have my doubts that the people making this argument actually follow through themselves and pick the ugly food at the supermarket, or really know if actually makes any difference. I feel like I am doing the right thing by buying fruit and vegetables instead of processed food. Do I now need to make f…

My local store sells 3Kg of potentially bruised apples for the price of 1Kg non-bruised. I often buy the bruised ones and cut off the bruised parts before eating. But I make this choice because while I do see a lower value in bruised apples, I don't see the value lower by a factor of 3. I usually cut off just 10-20% of the apple. If I paid full price for a bruised product I'm right to feel taken advantage of.

Post by sarah2079 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

Androider wrote: post #306

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…

Amazon's Whole Foods delivery in my area is now direct from warehouse to home instead of in-store picking. It's so, so much better than Instacart. On my last large order of almost a hundred items, not a single replacement, I got exactly what I ordered the same day. Instacart is such a sub-standard experience, it's just fundamentally the wrong approach and we wouldn't accept it for any other type of online purchase.

Post by thayne » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

eatYourFood wrote: post #452

thayne wrote: post #438

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> it's your preference, not something that's objectively better well, is that not a valid reason to want to pick out produce myself? How do I know the store working will have the same preference as me? What if I prefer my fruit to be under-ripe, and the store worker thinks I prefer over-ripe fruti?

One could argue that those preferences make the world a worst place. If we just accepted the first carrot we see rather than overlooking the crooked ones, there would be less waste. We are so picky and so fussy that extra waste and energy is expended just to make fussy people happy. I like to get what I want too but I can't help think that if we were all a little more relaxed in this area that the world might be a be…