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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

#61
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…

Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on the shelves. Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no ac…

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on the shelves.

that's a fair point, but it's not hard to come up with a counterexample where the produce is meaningfully different. I usually buy limes for their juice, and if I get a lime that produces less than 1oz of juice, that means I have to cut another one open and juice it. not only is this annoying, since limes are priced by quantity at my grocery store, but it means that I'm probably going to waste most of the second lime (or use cellophane to wrap up the second half, creating plastic waste).

I don't care too much about the aesthetic appeal of limes, but I'm definitely going to pick them all up to select the heaviest ones. these usually yield just a bit more than 1oz of juice, perfect for most of my use cases.

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

#62
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 produce and meat that has you in the store for only a few minutes, with good avoidance of other people. The interior of that section is just short low aisles that you can easily see over, and square tables of baked goods, so even if there are a few other people there it is usually easy to keep track of them and arrange to have an obstacle between you and them.

My current approach is to get most of my groceries by their free contactless pickup service, and get produce and meat via in-store quick raids. If while on a produce raid I see that there aren't many people shopping and they are doing a good job with masks and distancing I might expand the mission to grab other things while I'm there.

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

#63
post #13

"Allow substitutions" is the risky click of 2020.

Whole Foods amusingly substituted hot sauce for baking powder. Less amusingly, Peapod (Stop and Shop) substituted Diet Coke for regular. What am I supposed to do with that? Maybe I'll order some Mentos next time.

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

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on the shelves. Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no ac…

Notwithstanding the baby carrots example, most ugly produced is still used and sold. It’s made into soups, salsas, juices, etc. I’ve read that one reason we get so many e-coli infections from lettuce is that there is no secondary market (no lettuce juice) so the farmers drive it to the livestock farms and track back germs to the lettuce farm on their wheels.

The shavings from baby carrot production are still used, for juice and pulp.

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

#65
post #13

"Allow substitutions" is the risky click of 2020.

Whole Foods amusingly substituted hot sauce for baking powder. Less amusingly, Peapod (Stop and Shop) substituted Diet Coke for regular. What am I supposed to do with that? Maybe I'll order some Mentos next time.

I had an order that asked for "firm tofu" and ended up with mukimame. Which, ya know... pretty close but still pretty far. :P

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

#67
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…

You also can't substitute one brand of salsa for another. That'll start fights in some circles.

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

#68
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…

Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on the shelves. Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no ac…

[deleted]

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get any discount in this case though. You're still paying $2-3/lb for bruised apples that are like you said literally waste at that point and $2-5/lb for chicken that if you picked out yourself would be of higher quality. Even if they did give you a price break for lower quality food. They'd still do things like give you a pineapple that will never ripen before it rots like we received last week.

What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not actually objective quality.

If the vast majority of shoppers perceive a product as lower quality it is, almost by definition, worth less in a market. Quality is a very tricky idea to pin down (read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you'd like to hear a lot on the idea) and claiming that your own highly biased opinion on the matter is what counts as "objective" is a pretty bold claim.

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

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get any discount in this case though. You're still paying $2-3/lb for bruised apples that are like you said literally waste at that point and $2-5/lb for chicken that if you picked out yourself would be of higher quality. Even if they did give you a price break for lower quality food. They'd still do things like give you a pineapple that will never ripen before it rots like we received last week.

What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not actually objective quality.

I can understand that for a crooked carrot, but for example a tomato with broken skin actually gets bad pretty quickly.
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