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How bizarre that the article mentions Amazon Fresh but completely fails to mention that you can get free delivery from Whole Foods via Prime Now. I routinely or

How bizarre that the article mentions Amazon Fresh but completely fails to mention that you can get free delivery from Whole Foods via Prime Now. I routinely order stuff from Whole Foods through Prime Now and get it just a few hours later, it's pretty awesome. I used to occasionally order Whole Foods via Instacart but haven't once since the acquisition.

abalone 8y ago
Exactly. Prime Now is the Instacart killer with respect to Whole Foods, not Amazon Fresh. In the SF store where they first rolled it out you could literally see them just set up shelves and fridges upstairs and duplicate Instacart's model. Except for two advantages: (a) Free 2 hour delivery to Prime members / absolutely no fees apart from tip. (b) Better inventory data. This is huge. It's directly integrated with WF's logistics backend. It radically lowers the missing item / substitution problem that is the source of the worst outcomes with Instacart. Having said that, all the other grocers are freaking out about this so there may still be a growth opportunity for Instacart.
- fmajid 8y ago
  Not to mention the biggest problem with Instacart—the prices they charge you are completely made up and not the grocery's price. I understand paying a flat fee for delivery, but certainly not random and opaque markups.
  - imroot 8y ago
    Instacart and Shipt (who was recently acquired by Target) make money from the price slew between what they're paying (which, might not even be the cost that's on the grocery shelf -- it may be lower), and the price that they're charging you. Yes, they have to pay the Shoppers a per-item fee, but, for the most part, the price that Insta is paying isn't the price that's listed on the shelf.
  - abalone 8y ago
    Well that's true sometimes but it depends on the store. Instacart actually matches in-store prices in certain stores. In the app these stores are noted as having "everyday store prices." If there's a markup it will say "view pricing policy" instead. Their Whole Foods deal delivered everyday store prices so that's why I didn't list this as a difference. In SF Costco and Safeway have markups but for example Bi-Rite, Rainbow, Smart & Final and Mollie Stone's do not. I know Instacart used to mark up everything and people hated it. So they've taken to hiding the cost somehow.. Maybe they're asking the smaller stores to take it out of their margins, and they just can't get Safeway & Costco to do it. Maybe they're tricking customers into paying a 10% markup with their "service fee". That fee reportedly does not get passed on to the workers and is optional but most customers probably don't realize this. Amazon doesn't have as much of a cost problem here because they have the Prime membership fee, plus economies of scale.
    - koolba 8y ago
      > Maybe they're tricking customers into paying a 10% markup with their "service fee". That fee reportedly does not get passed on to the workers and is optional but most customers probably don't realize this. Ha! “Optional service fee” sounds like the reverse of “mandatory tip.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    It's kind of a paradox. I can see what you're saying, but at the same time, I don't expect e.g. a retailer to be transparent with me about their supplier costs, and phrase their prices as "$2 unit wholesale cost, $0.50 retail storage fee."
    - khuey 8y ago
      The difference is that to get that $2/unit wholesale cost I need to buy 10k units and to get the regular price from the thing on Instacart I just need to go to the store. The latter feels far more achievable.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  a tip that is mandatory is a fee with a more pleasant sounding name.
  - fosco 8y ago
    Is it possible by forcing this in the early term they may make tipping obsolete in the long run? It appears to remove any question of how much to tip... You won't have to think about it when the goods arrive... I wonder if in the long run I would prefer this towards an unknown expectation of the delivery person
- notyourday 8y ago
  WholeFoods delivery is instacart killer, not Prime.
  - abalone 8y ago
    That’s what Prime Now is. They added support for Whole Foods in select markets.
    - notyourday 8y ago
      Maybe I was not clear - the point that I was making the instacart killer is not a specific whole foods product. It is whole foods doing order picking/delivery using its own trained workforce that knows that specific store and is fully integrated into the logistics pipeline of WF. In the race to the bottom WF does not even need to charge more than a nominal fee for delivery with zero upcharge on the product (of course it would right now since Instacart showed that people will pay markups even for inferior service, which means they will definitely pay such markups for the superior service)
MichaelApproved 8y ago
> free delivery from Whole Foods via Prime Now More like "free". Amazon preselects $5 tip for the delivery. I don't have to tip the FedEx driver, why should I tip this delivery driver? It's not free if I'm expected to tip. Pay your workers a living wage and build it into the price.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  Do you tip pizza delivery, or do you say that you don’t tip fedex so you won’t tip pizza either? Arguably, pizza delivery drivers do even less work than Instacart people who have to shop on your behalf and wait in checkout lines etc.
  - saidajigumi 8y ago
    Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon. Travel, for example, to the EU or other parts of the world where there's no tipping. Workers are paid a living wage and have benefits (esp. in countries that didn't go with employer-supplied benefits in the wake of WWII). They want no part of "tipping". Combine that with VAT-using countries, and it's delightful to look at a restaurant menu and realize there's zero obfuscation about what the final bill will be. Not to mention tipping as a vehicle for wage theft, and playing into a generally regressive compensation system.
    - dgzl 8y ago
      I'm strongly against tipping, but I also don't need more reasons for Americans to dislike me, so I tip anyway.
      - saidajigumi 8y ago
        Agreed: not tipping as an individual act in the US makes you a jerk, hurting workers without changing the system. Such change would probably have to be brought about via legislation that rolled up a combination of wage and benefits reforms.
yahyaheee 8y ago
Except it’s not available everywhere Instacart is, which is just a loss of business on their end and ends up with some unhappy customers
Thibaut1 8y ago
Where I live, Whole Foods tends to offer mid to high grade foods (for the middle class person at least). What makes you think it's low quality? I can get live mussels and clams, relatively ethical and fresh beef, good cheeses, decent produce... There are much worse options. Is Whole Foods not always like this? I went to one in California (just North of Monterey as I recall) and it seemed nice enough too. I live in Canada though, so maybe in the rest of the US it's not so great.
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  Dunno what you are replying to, but where I live whole foods is pretty damn high quality, especially with respect to meat & poultry.
  - koolba 8y ago
    Spot on. The Whole Foods meat department is a thing of beauty both on its own and compared to other mainstream chain supermarkets.
- wil421 8y ago
  Most places that are selling muscles, clams, or oysters on ice are selling live shellfish. In the US they are required to keep the tag and you can ask for it. The date of harvest and origin will be shown on it.
ivcha 8y ago
Did Amazon pay you to write this?

abalone 8y ago

Exactly. Prime Now is the Instacart killer with respect to Whole Foods, not Amazon Fresh. In the SF store where they first rolled it out you could literally see them just set up shelves and fridges upstairs and duplicate Instacart's model. Except for two advantages: (a) Free 2 hour delivery to Prime members / absolutely no fees apart from tip. (b) Better inventory data. This is huge. It's directly integrated with WF's logistics backend. It radically lowers the missing item / substitution problem that is the source of the worst outcomes with Instacart. Having said that, all the other grocers are freaking out about this so there may still be a growth opportunity for Instacart.

fmajid 8y ago
Not to mention the biggest problem with Instacart—the prices they charge you are completely made up and not the grocery's price. I understand paying a flat fee for delivery, but certainly not random and opaque markups.
- imroot 8y ago
  Instacart and Shipt (who was recently acquired by Target) make money from the price slew between what they're paying (which, might not even be the cost that's on the grocery shelf -- it may be lower), and the price that they're charging you. Yes, they have to pay the Shoppers a per-item fee, but, for the most part, the price that Insta is paying isn't the price that's listed on the shelf.
- abalone 8y ago
  Well that's true sometimes but it depends on the store. Instacart actually matches in-store prices in certain stores. In the app these stores are noted as having "everyday store prices." If there's a markup it will say "view pricing policy" instead. Their Whole Foods deal delivered everyday store prices so that's why I didn't list this as a difference. In SF Costco and Safeway have markups but for example Bi-Rite, Rainbow, Smart & Final and Mollie Stone's do not. I know Instacart used to mark up everything and people hated it. So they've taken to hiding the cost somehow.. Maybe they're asking the smaller stores to take it out of their margins, and they just can't get Safeway & Costco to do it. Maybe they're tricking customers into paying a 10% markup with their "service fee". That fee reportedly does not get passed on to the workers and is optional but most customers probably don't realize this. Amazon doesn't have as much of a cost problem here because they have the Prime membership fee, plus economies of scale.
  - koolba 8y ago
    > Maybe they're tricking customers into paying a 10% markup with their "service fee". That fee reportedly does not get passed on to the workers and is optional but most customers probably don't realize this. Ha! “Optional service fee” sounds like the reverse of “mandatory tip.
- SilasX 8y ago
  It's kind of a paradox. I can see what you're saying, but at the same time, I don't expect e.g. a retailer to be transparent with me about their supplier costs, and phrase their prices as "$2 unit wholesale cost, $0.50 retail storage fee."
  - khuey 8y ago
    The difference is that to get that $2/unit wholesale cost I need to buy 10k units and to get the regular price from the thing on Instacart I just need to go to the store. The latter feels far more achievable.
Shivetya 8y ago
a tip that is mandatory is a fee with a more pleasant sounding name.
- fosco 8y ago
  Is it possible by forcing this in the early term they may make tipping obsolete in the long run? It appears to remove any question of how much to tip... You won't have to think about it when the goods arrive... I wonder if in the long run I would prefer this towards an unknown expectation of the delivery person
notyourday 8y ago
WholeFoods delivery is instacart killer, not Prime.
- abalone 8y ago
  That’s what Prime Now is. They added support for Whole Foods in select markets.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    Maybe I was not clear - the point that I was making the instacart killer is not a specific whole foods product. It is whole foods doing order picking/delivery using its own trained workforce that knows that specific store and is fully integrated into the logistics pipeline of WF. In the race to the bottom WF does not even need to charge more than a nominal fee for delivery with zero upcharge on the product (of course it would right now since Instacart showed that people will pay markups even for inferior service, which means they will definitely pay such markups for the superior service)

MichaelApproved 8y ago

> free delivery from Whole Foods via Prime Now More like "free". Amazon preselects $5 tip for the delivery. I don't have to tip the FedEx driver, why should I tip this delivery driver? It's not free if I'm expected to tip. Pay your workers a living wage and build it into the price.

lawnchair_larry 8y ago
Do you tip pizza delivery, or do you say that you don’t tip fedex so you won’t tip pizza either? Arguably, pizza delivery drivers do even less work than Instacart people who have to shop on your behalf and wait in checkout lines etc.
- saidajigumi 8y ago
  Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon. Travel, for example, to the EU or other parts of the world where there's no tipping. Workers are paid a living wage and have benefits (esp. in countries that didn't go with employer-supplied benefits in the wake of WWII). They want no part of "tipping". Combine that with VAT-using countries, and it's delightful to look at a restaurant menu and realize there's zero obfuscation about what the final bill will be. Not to mention tipping as a vehicle for wage theft, and playing into a generally regressive compensation system.
  - dgzl 8y ago
    I'm strongly against tipping, but I also don't need more reasons for Americans to dislike me, so I tip anyway.
    - saidajigumi 8y ago
      Agreed: not tipping as an individual act in the US makes you a jerk, hurting workers without changing the system. Such change would probably have to be brought about via legislation that rolled up a combination of wage and benefits reforms.

yahyaheee 8y ago

Except it’s not available everywhere Instacart is, which is just a loss of business on their end and ends up with some unhappy customers

Thibaut1 8y ago

Where I live, Whole Foods tends to offer mid to high grade foods (for the middle class person at least). What makes you think it's low quality? I can get live mussels and clams, relatively ethical and fresh beef, good cheeses, decent produce... There are much worse options. Is Whole Foods not always like this? I went to one in California (just North of Monterey as I recall) and it seemed nice enough too. I live in Canada though, so maybe in the rest of the US it's not so great.

spookthesunset 8y ago
Dunno what you are replying to, but where I live whole foods is pretty damn high quality, especially with respect to meat & poultry.
- koolba 8y ago
  Spot on. The Whole Foods meat department is a thing of beauty both on its own and compared to other mainstream chain supermarkets.
wil421 8y ago
Most places that are selling muscles, clams, or oysters on ice are selling live shellfish. In the US they are required to keep the tag and you can ask for it. The date of harvest and origin will be shown on it.

ivcha 8y ago

Did Amazon pay you to write this?