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A French Grocery Chain Is Trolling Amazon Go
- onion2k 10y agoThis is exactly how innovation is supposed to work - if a rival company (or a new entry to the market) comes up with a better solution then you have to innovate to survive. It's exactly why competition is important. It forces companies to improve what they offer. If they can do it in clever ways that don't cost much, that's even better. The business wins and the customer gets a better experience. If Amazon has shocked the supermarket industry in to action then that's awesome.
- llsf 10y agoI guess that was the Monoprix's point that have a system with no cashier for more than 10 year now. Or do you mean that the 10 years old system pushed Amazon to innovate by redoing it with an app ?
- Luc 10y ago> If Amazon has shocked the supermarket industry in to action then that's awesome. Pffft, it's got nothing to do with Amazon, that's just the marketing spiel.
- efournie 10y agoAmazon didn't really shock them into action as the service has been available for quite a few years. They are probably trying to show that Amazon shopping is not that disruptive.
- lis 10y agoThis service is actually 10 years old. But you are right, though - I'm working in this space and Amazon Go definitely helped to shake up some people. Let's see if we can turn this into action.
- jbmorgado 10y agoYou didn't get the part where Amazon "started thinking about this" 4 years ago but Monoprice is already doing it for 10 years. Either Amazon copied the ideia or they reinvented the wheel.
- realstuff 10y agoThis is seriously better than Amazon Go; error-free and free delivery!
- Aaargh20318 10y agoWhen I go to a supermarket, I have to deal with finding the stuff I need, way too many people in the store, etc. but at least I can take my stuff home immediately. When I buy online I have to wait for delivery, but at least I don't have to go looking for stuff in 20 different isles only to find out the thing I needed is in a completely illogical place, or deal with all the people there. This concept combines all the disadvantages of physically going to a supermarket with all the disadvantages of buying online. Amazon's concept actually improves the physical buying experience.
- csomar 10y agoDepends how much time the physical delivery takes. From my experience Monoprix picks high-rise locations (not like WallMart). Most of its customers should be at walking distance. I don't want to speculate but it would help if a french gentleman tells us his experience.
- vanwalj 10y agoYou're right, every city I used to live in France, I had at least 1 Monoprix within a short walk distance. Where I currently live, I can get to 3 different Monoprix in less than 10 minutes by walk. Never seen a Monoprix outside of a city anyway:)
- bambax 10y agoGoing to a (small) supermarket is not a disadvantage, I find it a nice experience, because you can see/smell/touch) the products you want. I wouldn't buy fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, cheese, etc. online. Not being able to take your stuff home is a little annoying, but depending on where you live it can be almost necessary to have groceries delivered. In Paris many buildings don't have elevators at all, or very small ones that can hold at most two people and not many bags. If you live on the 5th floor you're happy to get someone bring the bags up the stairs for you.
- BipolarElsa 10y agoit would have been much funnier if they just kept going with the bit and said something like: "and check out your groceries like a normal human being you imbecile."
- nateguchi 10y agoI wonder what the difference between the cost of Amazon's technology is vs Monoprix's service? Monoprix may have found that they can make more money / save on initial outlay of shop fitting by offering a similar service, but without the technology.
- kehrlann 10y agoSlightly different use case, though. Say I want a sandwich and a drink, I want that right now, not delivered to my house in one hour. Funny PR, though !
- randlet 10y agoSo take it with you? You obviously don't have to get it delivered. It's still an awesome service.
- dougmany 10y agoHe might have to wait in line though. Which really touches on what the Amazon service is good for. They should be focusing on putting their technology in gas stations and convenience stores, not supermarkets. It would be great to just go in and grab a few things and walk out. Where as in a Grocery store, the french version is much better.
- heisenbit 10y agoThe fun bit is that Monoprix is beating Amazon through a superior e2e logistics solution.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rathish_g 10y agoI am still sceptical about AmazonGo. 1. How will Amazon technology work if two friends are walking into the store and both are adding products to the cart? 2. How will it work in a crowded store as it's quite possible that the product will end up if a different account? Amazon might have to invest in more security guards than cashiers!
- bArray 10y agoExactly and kids often pick things up on your behalf and stick them in the trolley. "Mum/Dad can I have..." "Sure, go pick it up for me".
- mdrzn 10y agoThat's why they're starting with a test-shop and once they'll figure it out they'll go big.
- cylinder 10y agoAmazon does these things for PR only. The only place checkout lines have ever been an issue for me is the Whole Foods at Union Square NYC and that's a rare situation.
- thatfrenchguy 10y agoUnsurprisingly, the food in the Monoprix ad look better :/
- anexprogrammer 10y agoNot wrapping their cupcakes in a ton of petro chemical plastic either. So no instore bakery for Amazon I guess.
- cylinder 10y agoIt's France, they actually have standards for food quality.
- dchichkov 10y agoThey actually have food culture. I wish we've had some French bakeries and supermarkets in the Bay Area, not this Amazon stuff... Even Whole Foods is not quite there yet :-/
- dougmany 10y agoIt is more then just "Have french bakery". Culture is fitting because it is not just the bakery that makes the bread great. Farms, delivery, trade schools, customers all are required for french level of quality.
- ghaff 10y agoA comment I've heard that I suspect has at least some truth to it is that France has something of a monoculture around French food. That may well be overstating it. But I think it's fair to say that there is a highly optimized supply chain around delivering a specific cuisine and rather high consumer expectations around that cuisine.
- Flenser 10y agoAmazon Go Is About Way More Than Groceries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA2-iMz479o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA2-iMz479o
- frozenport 10y agoHuman technology costs too much and doesn't scale well.
- automatwon 10y agoIs this grocery charging 'Whole Paycheck' prices? The fact that they invest into this well-produced video, while referencing Amazon GO, located thousands of miles away in a different country, suggests their target demographic are tech-friendly and, by transitivity, affluent. How about Amazon GO? Is that a toy / experience / novelty for affluent tech-savvy early adopters? Sorry if I'm not political correct. I tried. My intent is not to troll or offend people who do shop at Whole Foods. I actually live in San Francisco, 10 feet away from a Whole Foods. I previously lived in Seattle, too. I feel that, compared to other fields such as Finance or law, tech tend to be more self-conscientious and guilty about income inequality.
- hartator 10y agoMonoprix is definitely high end. Maybe not whole food prices though. French American speaking.
- miloshadzic 10y agoWhat? Monoprix is your regular supermarket.
- hartator 10y agohttp://www.lefigaro.fr/conso/2014/02/25/05007-20140225ARTFIG00101-le-monoprix-de-sceaux-magasin-le-plus-cher-de-france.php http://www.lefigaro.fr/conso/2014/02/25/05007-20140225ARTFIG... Monoprix is the most expensive supermarket.
- lucasverra 10y agoNo it's not. Of course your mileage may vary in terms of income, but monoprix has gone regular to premium(ish) in the last 10 years. If you have shopped elsewhere than Paris, you would agree on Carrfour Market ~ Monoprix > franprix (who is going premiumish also) > 8a8 > g20 > lidl et al > alimentation general du coin
- ekianjo 10y ago
- alexandros 10y agoThe point of Amazon Go is instant gratification. The point of this is not carrying stuff to your house. Cool troll, but they should be careful of the false sense of superiority. Perhaps they could hire some Nokia and BlackBerry execs to explain the concept to them.
- ZenoArrow 10y agoNo, the point of both is convenience. Which one is more convenient? Depends on how many items you purchase on supermarket trips.
- stymaar 10y agoMonoprix customer for two years, I can relate this is no false advertising or demonstration of intent : it works like this in real life. Monoprix live in a nice niche of upper class consumers living in the center of rich towns. The produits are kind of expensive, but the service is neat.
- k-mcgrady 10y agoHow does the checkout part work? Obviously you can't just leave your trolley at the checkout - they need your address and need to bill you. Is there a membership card you quickly scan or something like that?
- verroq 10y agoEven Costco requires you to have a membership. I'd imagine you have to sign up. Just like on Amazon.com
- jstoja 10y agoTwo ways: 1. You pay and leave your delivery informations. 2. You're a regular customer and have an membership account for that. I can see a lot of people living outside the city using this service because Monoprix is near their workplace. They go after work, ask for delivery, go back home by train, and then are delivered the day after for instance.
- Jacqued 10y agoYou sign up for free. Then you can just leave your trolley (along with your phone number so they find you in their DB) and go home and will pay upon delivery. I used this for some time and it was indeed very convenient
- Mithaldu 10y agoHow do you tell them when to deliver the stuff? Can you take some of the items immediately? Do checkout lines still occur?
- 10y ago
- donmatito 10y agoThis is a very fun bit of PR, but it represents a very common mistake from corporate innovators. 1) Successful business model (retail) 2) Smart iteration on the business model (Monoprix livraison a domicile +) 3) For legacy reason, do not upend the whole business model, do not put it front and center, limit it to some categories / users 4) Watch a younger competitor, not uncumbered by legacy, focus solely on that service 5) Get shocked when they get PR. Release a video to say you've done it for 10years 6) Go bankrupt as the new service spreads like wildfire Monoprix home delivery is great, my grandmother uses it quite a lot, but retailers are still totally going to get taken over by Amazon
- bambax 10y agoI'm afraid you may be right, and it makes me sad. I like shopping online with Amazon, but I would hate seeing groceries taken away with unmanned dystopian and probably very dysfunctional automated outlets like on the Amazon video. What happens when something goes wrong? -- The automated video system thinks you have taken two products when you have taken just one; or it thinks you have taken one and you took two, and a security guy who has zero authority over how the system operates, or understanding of it, accuses you of stealing; or a discount was advertised on the shelf but not implemented on the system; etc. What happens if Amazon decides, for some reason that they will not explain and that you can't appeal, to cancel your account? Then you can't even go grocery shopping? The future is much less exciting than it used to be.
- verbify 10y ago> What happens when something goes wrong? Personally I've found Amazon's customer service is pretty reasonable (sometimes you need to dig in the site to find something). I know they aren't a great company in other ways - their workers are poorly paid and overworked, but that's one thing I'm not worried about. > What happens if Amazon decides, for some reason that they will not explain and that you can't appeal, to cancel your account? Then you can't even go grocery shopping? Only if they have a monopoly, if this proves successful I expect other shops will start investing in this too (or licence the technology). You're just as likely to have an issue currently if you live in Bumfuck, Nowhere and the only store around refuses to serve you because they suspect you of stealing.
- StavrosK 10y agoDid anyone else find the original Amazon Go video's mentioning "deep learning", "webscale technologies" and "generic buzzwords" funny, when in reality they probably use people behind security camera screens tallying up what you buy?
- coldtea 10y ago>when in reality they probably use people behind security camera screens tallying up what you buy I doubt they are using that.
- bArray 10y agoI imagine that edge cases will be flagged and checked by a human operator, a bit like postal services do with machine unreadable addresses. Deep learning isn't perfect - how would you suggest those cases are handled?
- coldtea 10y ago>Deep learning isn't perfect Didn't claim it was. >how would you suggest those cases are handled? Obviously the same way as you suggest. But the parent talked about them MERELY using human operators behind cameras, like it's just some mechanical turk-based fraud...
- StavrosK 10y agoEh, I'm sure they use some face recognition to track people and products, but that's about it. How would you have implemented it?
- coldtea 10y agoI wouldn't make any claims like Amazon did, unless it was an over 95% automated, with humans involved only in some case of dispute etc. So, face recognition to track people + image recognition to track products (which is not that difficult, since it's a constrained data set e.g. 40.000 products to train, and they can also use information about position to narrow results -- eg. aisle B, so it's one of the soaps, etc).
- WalterBright 10y agoI know that I often don't go to the grocery store to pick up an item or two simply because I don't want to wait in the checkout line.
- WalterBright 10y agoIs all this "deep learning", "computer vision" and "sensor fusion" necessary when you could just put RFID tags on the items?
- verbify 10y agoRFID tags would raise the cost of the items. E.g. garlic costs pennies, less than an RFID chip.
- deodorel 10y agoFyi french supermarkets like carrefour or leclerc already have solutions where they give you a scanner and you scan yourself the stuff you buy and just pay when exiting. Very fast and convenient.
- haylem 10y agoThat's really not limited to France though. I've seen the same at Tesco, Waitrose and Saintsbury in the UK, in several chains in China, in a bunch of Germany as well (Aldi?), and in Australia (Whoolworths, Coles...). Ikea has had that for a while as well. So has Metro all over the world, obviously. I have been using self-service checkouts for more than a decade in most countries. I'd be surprised if that was considered news. Amazon Go and instant payment systems are a different topic entirely though. Also, "very fast" is debatable: it's often broken, and some items are subject to different buying conditions and can't be purchased via these self-service checkout lanes, like alcohol, or "luxury" items with high margins, like razor blades. Quite often, if given the choice of an almost empty till queue or a self-service line, I'll pick the almost empty till queue. It's often more efficient. Self-service is great for 24/7 supermarkets though. I remember really huge Tesco stores in the UK that are but where you can shop at 3AM and use the self-service. Most employees at this time of night are the stock management people, and there's only one or 2 cashiers left (and security, obviously). The rest is self-service. For that scenario, it's indeed convenient.
- Nullabillity 10y agoThere's a huge difference between https://www.coop.se/PageFiles/4406/toppbild-ShopExpress.jpg https://www.coop.se/PageFiles/4406/toppbild-ShopExpress.jpg and http://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s480x480/e35/11849368_1472283443078931_1533081537_n.jpg?ig_cache_key=MTA4NDI1NzAwMjA4OTQ5MzMzOQ%3D%3D.2 http://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s480x480/e35/11... . With the handheld ones (first picture) you just scan the products and put them into your bag when you pick them up at the store aisle. To pay, scan a special barcode at the checkout and put your card into the machine. No need to rebag your stuff, shows you your current total to pay at all times, and it's simple enough that I've never seen it out of order. Oh, and there's no risk of getting stuck behind that family that apparently wants to get the whole year's food shopping out of the way.
- 1_player 10y agoWhat is with the clickbaity title? Flagged, this is not Outbrain.
- novaleaf 10y agothe title matches the page title, and is very descriptive as to the contents.
- imglorp 10y agoOn another topic, please don't be that site: 66 MB over 325 requests and 30s to load over a 50mbps connection. And that's after Origin blocked 166 more assets. You're ruining the internet for everyone. By contrast, HN is 65k and 1s.
- crystalmeph 10y agoOn the plus side, the site works fine with NoScript with just the Google properties whitelisted.
- slim 10y agoThe site works fine with no javascript at all (disabled on my mobile)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Jugurtha 10y agoWebsites like this one piss me off. Here's the video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sF868SJSrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sF868SJSrE
- elcct 10y agoI couldn't stand the feeling of anxiety that you have to be home an hour later and wait for someone to show up with your grocery. Not only that, but what if they miss or misplace something? Too many questions to write. Obviously not for me. But Amazon Go looks like something I could use.
- giarc 10y agoI'm guessing that you could say "Deliver in 3 hours" as well.
- blackoil 10y agoIn India all local stores have this service, you fill up a basket leave it at counter with your address. They'll bill it and deliver at home and you'll pay in cash. Though no large chain I know does this.
- dingo_bat 10y agoHaha. Cute ad but let's see where customers go when everything is ~10% cheaper at Amazon.
- rokhayakebe 10y agoStarbucks: Cute ad but let's see where customers go when doing it yourself is 90% cheaper. Whole Foods: Cute ad but let's see where customers ... There is always a market for people willing to pay more for whatever reason.
- mendelk 10y agoIf my understanding of this Google-translated French page[0] is correct, it costs 1€, and there is a minimum order of 50€. I may be mistaken. If so, that can be a big difference, especially to the crowd that puts groceries in their personal bags, as depicted in both ads. [0] https://www.monoprix.fr/livraison-a-domicile?menuName=services1 https://www.monoprix.fr/livraison-a-domicile?menuName=servic...
- ebalit 10y agoFrench stores are forbidden to give non-reusable plastic bags, precisely to nudge everyone to switch to reusable bags.
- oelmekki 10y agoAhah, nice troll. But I still prefer to both those options the way I do it : I just shop on store's website and ask for delivery. This allows me to have shopping lists that I can use as templates, I can shop any hour of the day and take time to compare products. Granted, this is especially a good fit for me because I work from home and can receive deliveries any time.
- ghaff 10y agoIt's interesting that you see just about every permutation of shopping and delivery options out there. You have online shopping and delivery as you mention. I'd do this more myself if there were a service I liked where I live. One of the local chains around here started up a "To Go" service recently. You shop online and pick up. I assume the market here is people who can easily drive but may not be very mobile or have young kids that just make it a hassle to do the picking themselves. (My anecdotal observation is this service isn't being used much.) And this case is pretty much what a lot of markets in cities have been doing forever. (Often smaller markets but I believe Whole Foods does this in some locations as well.)
- coldcode 10y agoAs usual Amazon tries to take over an industry and makes no profit, which is their usual recipe. They have a P/E of 174 which means there is no chance they will ever make enough to be a real profitable enterprise. Outside of AWS I think everything else contributes no profits at all. But I do like the leave the cart idea although that only works if the prices supports the extra delivery.
- merb 10y ago"Seatle's a bit far away" :D:D:D:D