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> I don't get what you mean by "ensure good execution" because it takes so little for grocers to successfully move into a market like Blue Apron's. It also too

> I don't get what you mean by "ensure good execution" because it takes so little for grocers to successfully move into a market like Blue Apron's. It also took little more than a good website to compete with Amazon in the early days, but B&N/Borders/etc. never figured out a way to do it well. What I want to do is order stuff with as little friction as possible, and have the right items delivered in a way that's convenient. The chain delivery service we tried involved a few things: 1. A poor site experience. It had 'pantry' functionality, but it was anything but good. Putting together a large order took nearly as much time as doing it in person. 2. Delivery was scheduled during windows, windows that were often either missed, or perhaps worse, beat by many hours. They were often many hours outside the window. We eventually stopped including anything fresh in the order and would pick those up ourselves on days when we were hosting guests. That defeats much of the point. It was like ordering groceries from the cable company. 3. We were able to select whether we'd want substitutions if something was unavailable. In virtually every order, we would either receive items (we didn't want) when we specified no substitutions, or didn't get substitutions when we wanted them. Often the substituted items were poorly chosen as stand-ins for what was unavailable. 4. It required a young male delivery guy to enter the home to deliver the items to the kitchen. It was a different person nearly every time. This is unacceptable for a number of reasons. Whenever substitution issues happened they seemed so disconnected from the process that it meant it never got better, and recourse took more time than it was worth. Why a company with billions at its disposal and half a million employees can't get that right is somehow both a mystery, yet also a foregone conclusion. While I seriously doubt Blue Apron poses much of a threat to the entrenched companies, I think someone else (perhaps Amazon) probably does.

trimbo 9y ago
Ah ok. So the execution you're speaking of is on the delivery aspect. That makes sense now. In terms of execution, I was thinking you meant purely of the food itself and leveraging the existing dominant consumer behavior (going to the grocery store)
dragonwriter 9y ago
> It also took little more than a good website to compete with Amazon in the early days, but B&N/Borders/etc. never figured out a way to do it well. Borders didn't try in the early days; when they got around to online retail, they outsourced it to Amazon. Much too late they tried their own... B&N actually had a good website (it was always better than Amazon's for ordering books, IMO), they just weren't committed to competing with their own stores on price because the website was an "and, also..." not a bet-the-compaby deal.
ams6110 9y ago
> young male delivery guy ... This is unacceptable Why? Husbands/boyfriends think their housewife might be tempted?
- yoshamano 9y ago
  I'm going to wager that they were trying to hint at both the inexperience of youth, and a different person each time so you can't build up a relationship with them. The kind of relationship where they remember the last 3 orders they've delivered to them have been wrong, and they then check the order themselves before they leave the warehouse/store.
  - lovich 9y ago
    To be fair to ams6110, the op went out of his way to specify the gender of the delivery person. I had the same problem with these services and having yet to have a single person deliver to me twice over 4 years, but that's regardless of whether they are a man,woman, or any other gender
    - mercer 9y ago
      I'd say the charitable interpretation is that the poster believes that 'male' is salient because males are generally more clueless in regards to grocery shopping. From experience I'd agree that this is a correct observation, but perhaps a risky one to make considering recent discussions (among other things). Again though, the charitable interpretation is that the poster did not really think about this statement too much, did not intend to cause offense, and might be quite open to the viewpoint that men are actually great at grocery shopping and assuming otherwise - however harmless it may seem to some people - is to be avoided. I can't speak for anything else but I've become convinced that I should assume the charitable interpretation. If even writing this is considered an example of 'privilege' or sweeping real issues under the table, I truly and honestly want this to be pointed out and I'll seriously consider it in the progression of my personal views on these matters. This is a bit of a sidenote, by the way, and not a direct response to your comment. I've just been thinking a bunch about all this lately, and your comment seemed a good a place as any to express myself :).
skinnymuch 9y ago
Borders Toys r us, maybe Target? Outsourced their sites to Amazon for years. All to disastrous results. Can't count Borders vs Amazon. Barnes & Noble gave a decent try, to this day maybe (haven't been on for a few years). They even got domains like books.com 20 years ago. But they would do the annoying thing many retailers did - consider the website secondary to their brick & mortar. Price things differently online, not accept an online price in-store and vice versa. B&N years later even did a decent job with the Nook. It still didn't get them anywhere. -- Which service did you use? I only know of Peapod in the US for big grocery chains. The prices were high. Though when they had items for sale, the cost would be equal to their in store cost or slightly lower. I never had an issue telling them to drop my stuff at my doorstep after the first time when I didn't want them to come inside. Each time I placed a big box or two at my doorstep for them to place my order into. I used Peapod maybe 15 times, on and off, between 2007-2010. That's ages ago for web times. The big window range was annoying though later on they let you spend a bit extra to make it smaller. Rarely did they miss the time window I set. This all took place in central Jersey. It felt figured out enough to me a decade ago. Maybe I'm an exception.
jon-wood 9y ago
Clearly the experience you had was terrible, but done well I find online grocery deliver far better. In the UK its been a thing for a long time and the stores have shaken out the issues. Delivery slots are almost always adhered to, and if they're not the driver will call and tell you what's happening. Substitutions are pretty rare in my experience, and when they do happen you can refuse them at the door and the delivery driver will just remove it from your bill, I've also had more expensive items subbed in with no change to the amount I was charged. Drivers will generally ask if you want help, but will wait outside when asked. Finally the web experience after a few orders is so much better than in store, and that's even with some awful UX in places. They track what you buy frequently and then show them as the first result in searches - I can do a full shop in twenty minutes or so now the site has been properly trained (they also feed loyalty card data in, so if you're already a frequent shopper with a chain its probably trained already).
- celticninja 9y ago
  Just to say that this is exactly experience too. I am amazed that US grocery stores don't offer it as standard especially as Asda are owned by Wal-Mart.

trimbo 9y ago

Ah ok. So the execution you're speaking of is on the delivery aspect. That makes sense now. In terms of execution, I was thinking you meant purely of the food itself and leveraging the existing dominant consumer behavior (going to the grocery store)

dragonwriter 9y ago

> It also took little more than a good website to compete with Amazon in the early days, but B&N/Borders/etc. never figured out a way to do it well. Borders didn't try in the early days; when they got around to online retail, they outsourced it to Amazon. Much too late they tried their own... B&N actually had a good website (it was always better than Amazon's for ordering books, IMO), they just weren't committed to competing with their own stores on price because the website was an "and, also..." not a bet-the-compaby deal.

ams6110 9y ago

> young male delivery guy ... This is unacceptable Why? Husbands/boyfriends think their housewife might be tempted?

yoshamano 9y ago
I'm going to wager that they were trying to hint at both the inexperience of youth, and a different person each time so you can't build up a relationship with them. The kind of relationship where they remember the last 3 orders they've delivered to them have been wrong, and they then check the order themselves before they leave the warehouse/store.
- lovich 9y ago
  To be fair to ams6110, the op went out of his way to specify the gender of the delivery person. I had the same problem with these services and having yet to have a single person deliver to me twice over 4 years, but that's regardless of whether they are a man,woman, or any other gender
  - mercer 9y ago
    I'd say the charitable interpretation is that the poster believes that 'male' is salient because males are generally more clueless in regards to grocery shopping. From experience I'd agree that this is a correct observation, but perhaps a risky one to make considering recent discussions (among other things). Again though, the charitable interpretation is that the poster did not really think about this statement too much, did not intend to cause offense, and might be quite open to the viewpoint that men are actually great at grocery shopping and assuming otherwise - however harmless it may seem to some people - is to be avoided. I can't speak for anything else but I've become convinced that I should assume the charitable interpretation. If even writing this is considered an example of 'privilege' or sweeping real issues under the table, I truly and honestly want this to be pointed out and I'll seriously consider it in the progression of my personal views on these matters. This is a bit of a sidenote, by the way, and not a direct response to your comment. I've just been thinking a bunch about all this lately, and your comment seemed a good a place as any to express myself :).

skinnymuch 9y ago

Borders Toys r us, maybe Target? Outsourced their sites to Amazon for years. All to disastrous results. Can't count Borders vs Amazon. Barnes & Noble gave a decent try, to this day maybe (haven't been on for a few years). They even got domains like books.com 20 years ago. But they would do the annoying thing many retailers did - consider the website secondary to their brick & mortar. Price things differently online, not accept an online price in-store and vice versa. B&N years later even did a decent job with the Nook. It still didn't get them anywhere. -- Which service did you use? I only know of Peapod in the US for big grocery chains. The prices were high. Though when they had items for sale, the cost would be equal to their in store cost or slightly lower. I never had an issue telling them to drop my stuff at my doorstep after the first time when I didn't want them to come inside. Each time I placed a big box or two at my doorstep for them to place my order into. I used Peapod maybe 15 times, on and off, between 2007-2010. That's ages ago for web times. The big window range was annoying though later on they let you spend a bit extra to make it smaller. Rarely did they miss the time window I set. This all took place in central Jersey. It felt figured out enough to me a decade ago. Maybe I'm an exception.

jon-wood 9y ago

Clearly the experience you had was terrible, but done well I find online grocery deliver far better. In the UK its been a thing for a long time and the stores have shaken out the issues. Delivery slots are almost always adhered to, and if they're not the driver will call and tell you what's happening. Substitutions are pretty rare in my experience, and when they do happen you can refuse them at the door and the delivery driver will just remove it from your bill, I've also had more expensive items subbed in with no change to the amount I was charged. Drivers will generally ask if you want help, but will wait outside when asked. Finally the web experience after a few orders is so much better than in store, and that's even with some awful UX in places. They track what you buy frequently and then show them as the first result in searches - I can do a full shop in twenty minutes or so now the site has been properly trained (they also feed loyalty card data in, so if you're already a frequent shopper with a chain its probably trained already).

celticninja 9y ago
Just to say that this is exactly experience too. I am amazed that US grocery stores don't offer it as standard especially as Asda are owned by Wal-Mart.