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Instacart wants to fix grocery shopping by eliminating the drive the store. Amazon wants to fix grocery shopping by eliminating checkout.[0] The friction with

Instacart wants to fix grocery shopping by eliminating the drive the store. Amazon wants to fix grocery shopping by eliminating checkout.[0] The friction with grocery shopping for me is in a completely different area, and also easily solvable. If I could go to a store that was basically a Kiva[1] fueled warehouse, enter an order on a tablet, and have it brought to my car (or order in the morning and do curbside pickup on my drive home from work), I would save the hassle of searching store shelves while playing demolition derby with a bunch of other carts. Walmart has toyed with free curbside pickup.[2] It should actually make groceries cheaper though. If they had a warehouse logistics backend, without customers wandering around through their inventory, they could do amazing things. With apologies to Clarence Saunders, yeah, basically I want to end self-service.[3] Customers were more efficient than the clerk for that job, so that model won. But robots are much more efficient than customers now, so I'm ready for the next revolution. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-go-grocery-store-future-photos-video-2016-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-go-grocery-store-futur... [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/meet-amazons-busiest-employee-the-kiva-robot/ https://www.cnet.com/news/meet-amazons-busiest-employee-the-... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-is-expanding-free-curbside-grocery-pick-up-2016-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-is-expanding-free-cur... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Saunders_(grocer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Saunders_(grocer)

ghaff 10y ago
It doesn't use robots but Hannaford has a curbside pickup option. Anecdotally doesn't seem to be used much though and for me seems to satisfy a pretty narrow use case--people who can easily drive to the store but can't or don't want to wheel a shopping cart around.
tharibo 10y ago
All big stores are doing it now in France (in large cities at least). It's called "<store>-drive" (like you would have a "Walmart-drive" in the USA). Some are doing it next to the shop, others try new warehouses at different locations (because one of the incentives is to avoid traffic too). It's far from perfect; but at least you don't have to walk the store for hours. Also, no tip culture in France, but workers seem to run against the clock, so I suppose they have incentives to deliver fast.

ghaff 10y ago

It doesn't use robots but Hannaford has a curbside pickup option. Anecdotally doesn't seem to be used much though and for me seems to satisfy a pretty narrow use case--people who can easily drive to the store but can't or don't want to wheel a shopping cart around.

tharibo 10y ago

All big stores are doing it now in France (in large cities at least). It's called "<store>-drive" (like you would have a "Walmart-drive" in the USA). Some are doing it next to the shop, others try new warehouses at different locations (because one of the incentives is to avoid traffic too). It's far from perfect; but at least you don't have to walk the store for hours. Also, no tip culture in France, but workers seem to run against the clock, so I suppose they have incentives to deliver fast.