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The future of the grocery business is web based ordering and automated delivery to the buyer. Amazon will crush other grocers due to first mover advantage and t

The future of the grocery business is web based ordering and automated delivery to the buyer. Amazon will crush other grocers due to first mover advantage and their massive technology workforce.

dasil003 8y ago
They need to get the quality control thing nailed first, which they can’t even do with their durable goods, don’t know how they’re going to do it with produce.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I find that difficult to imagine with perishable items. I don't want my milk sitting on my front porch at 30C for 2 hours until I get home, and neither do I want my lettuce sitting for the same amount of time at -30C (yes, I live in hell).
- rsynnott 8y ago
  Here (Ireland), where online grocery shopping is common, you just select a two hour window when you'll be home for delivery.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    And that's evening/weekends?
    - rsynnott 8y ago
      From tesco.ie: > You can usually have your shopping delivered between 10am and 9pm Monday to Friday, 10am and 7pm on Saturday, and between 12pm and 5pm on Sunday. I assume other supermarkets are similar. Apparently the slots are one hour, not two hour. I live basically beside a supermarket so just buy stuff on my walk home, so I'm rusty on how these services behave.
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        Oh, that's actually quite convenient! Now can Amazon match that?
        rsynnott 8y ago
        I'd be surprised, to be honest. Tesco and other conventional supermarkets have been doing this for decades, and they already have a more distributed logistics network (while many internet deliveries are serviced from 'dark stores' which exist just to do that, some are services from actual supermarkets!). Amazon has a lot of catching up to do. I do think it may be a slightly different question in the US; most US cities are much less dense than your average European city, which will presumably change things a bit. I don't see Amazon taking over the market in Europe, though.
        cmsj 8y ago
        Yes, Amazon Fresh does the same thing for grocery delivery in the UK (which is functionally equivalent to Ireland for this sort of thing).
    - buckminster 8y ago
      Yes, though popular slots are more expensive. In the UK you might pay £5. If you work from home you can get a cheap daytime slot for £1.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  Coop.dk (Danish site) will leave an isolated box on your doorstep that they guarantee will keep the food at the correct temp until 6pm. Never used them, because their offers are a tad too expensive and their minimum is more than I spend a week, but it would pretty much be a no brainer if I had small kids to pick up.
rsynnott 8y ago
They only really have first mover advantage in the US, though. In many countries, internet ordering of groceries is pretty old; Tesco started it in the UK and Ireland in _1997_, for instance, and I'm pretty sure there were Minitel-based grocery delivery services in France before that. The US market probably has special practical problems that European markets don't have (low population density outside about five cities, in particular), but it's hard to see how Amazon will automatically beat the likes of Tesco in this just because they're a tech company.
- Kephael 8y ago
  Internet ordering isn't where the real value is, it's in a logistics network from warehouse to consumer that is almost entirely automated.
  - rsynnott 8y ago
    On the warehouse side, the incumbents are doing that. Funnily enough, I was at Amazon's AWS Summit in London a while back, and one of the presenters was a guy who'd worked on some European supermarket's automated warehouse fulfilment stuff, using AWS. Automating delivery to consumer (ie self-driving vehicles) is a long, long way off, and Amazon isn't a particular leader in the field anyway. If it's ever workable, Tesco et al will just license it from Waymo or someone. As will Amazon, probably. And I think the ordering side is more important than you think. Doing a weekly shop with Amazon's awful website would be a miserable process; Tesco et al are already far ahead, there. I'm sure Amazon can catch up, but the idea that it has first mover advantage (except maybe in the US) is ridiculous. The big supermarkets also already have an extensive pre-existing warehouse system.
    - Kephael 8y ago
      I doubt they'll be able to compete on costs, on the retail front Amazon Go style stores are certainly the future. Legacy retailers (and grocers) are simply too labor heavy and their large retail footprint will come back to bite them. Even if last mile delivery has a driver, operational costs will be far lower.
wincy 8y ago
I live a block away from a “nice” Walmart in a nice part of town. We shopped at other more expensive grocery stores because we didn’t like the atmosphere at Walmart, it was big and overwhelming and dirty. Walmart has online pickup now. You order your groceries using their app, schedule a time, and pull up to get your groceries. It’s amazing. My wife and I order all our groceries this way. Since the minimum order price is $30, we’re wasting far less food and placing more orders. Before we’d go to Costco every two weeks, buy a bunch of perishables that would then go bad before we ate them. It has saved us money and we love it. If there’s a problem we can immediately go back to the store and get a replacement or a refund. Amazon needs to compete with THAT, and the customer service for when there’s an error, if they want to “crush” brick and mortar stores. Frankly, I don’t see what value they’d add compared to this.
- Kephael 8y ago
  Amazon will win because they will be able to compete on price and convenience. They don't have the massive overhead of the stores weighing them down. You're also forgetting that many young people who work in economically relevant areas of the country don't have cars. Demographics will work against these legacy retailers and grocers. The elderly who are stuck in their ways and like physical stores will become less mobile while the younger generations would prefer more convenient choices.
  - HashHishBang 8y ago
    Speaking as one of those people without a car: I've got a backpack. Grocery pickup is absurdly useful. You ever had a hiking pack to whoever is bagging or try and fill it while doing self-checkout? It's not bad in all honesty but it's still more annoying than just picking it up curbside. Plus the side benefit on not whipping some kid in the face with bag straps because I turned around too fast.
  - njarboe 8y ago
    "They don't have the massive overhead of the stores weighing them down." Amazon bought Whole Foods a few years back.
AlexandrB 8y ago
Except Amazon is already doing a very good job of destroying their own brand. Between how lazy they've gotten with packaging books, the supply chain ambiguity of mixed inventory, and the increasingly annoying ads for Amazon Basics products there are entire categories of stuff I will not risk buying from Amazon anymore. I may be the exception for now, but everyone has their breaking point on lazy service. It's just a matter of when the goodwill runs out.

The future of the grocery business is web based ordering and automated delivery to the buyer. Amazon will crush other grocers due to first mover advantage and their massive technology workforce.

dasil003 8y ago

They need to get the quality control thing nailed first, which they can’t even do with their durable goods, don’t know how they’re going to do it with produce.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

I find that difficult to imagine with perishable items. I don't want my milk sitting on my front porch at 30C for 2 hours until I get home, and neither do I want my lettuce sitting for the same amount of time at -30C (yes, I live in hell).

rsynnott 8y ago
Here (Ireland), where online grocery shopping is common, you just select a two hour window when you'll be home for delivery.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  And that's evening/weekends?
  - rsynnott 8y ago
    From tesco.ie: > You can usually have your shopping delivered between 10am and 9pm Monday to Friday, 10am and 7pm on Saturday, and between 12pm and 5pm on Sunday. I assume other supermarkets are similar. Apparently the slots are one hour, not two hour. I live basically beside a supermarket so just buy stuff on my walk home, so I'm rusty on how these services behave.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      Oh, that's actually quite convenient! Now can Amazon match that?
      - rsynnott 8y ago
        I'd be surprised, to be honest. Tesco and other conventional supermarkets have been doing this for decades, and they already have a more distributed logistics network (while many internet deliveries are serviced from 'dark stores' which exist just to do that, some are services from actual supermarkets!). Amazon has a lot of catching up to do. I do think it may be a slightly different question in the US; most US cities are much less dense than your average European city, which will presumably change things a bit. I don't see Amazon taking over the market in Europe, though.
      - cmsj 8y ago
        Yes, Amazon Fresh does the same thing for grocery delivery in the UK (which is functionally equivalent to Ireland for this sort of thing).
  - buckminster 8y ago
    Yes, though popular slots are more expensive. In the UK you might pay £5. If you work from home you can get a cheap daytime slot for £1.
tomjen3 8y ago
Coop.dk (Danish site) will leave an isolated box on your doorstep that they guarantee will keep the food at the correct temp until 6pm. Never used them, because their offers are a tad too expensive and their minimum is more than I spend a week, but it would pretty much be a no brainer if I had small kids to pick up.

rsynnott 8y ago

They only really have first mover advantage in the US, though. In many countries, internet ordering of groceries is pretty old; Tesco started it in the UK and Ireland in _1997_, for instance, and I'm pretty sure there were Minitel-based grocery delivery services in France before that. The US market probably has special practical problems that European markets don't have (low population density outside about five cities, in particular), but it's hard to see how Amazon will automatically beat the likes of Tesco in this just because they're a tech company.

Kephael 8y ago
Internet ordering isn't where the real value is, it's in a logistics network from warehouse to consumer that is almost entirely automated.
- rsynnott 8y ago
  On the warehouse side, the incumbents are doing that. Funnily enough, I was at Amazon's AWS Summit in London a while back, and one of the presenters was a guy who'd worked on some European supermarket's automated warehouse fulfilment stuff, using AWS. Automating delivery to consumer (ie self-driving vehicles) is a long, long way off, and Amazon isn't a particular leader in the field anyway. If it's ever workable, Tesco et al will just license it from Waymo or someone. As will Amazon, probably. And I think the ordering side is more important than you think. Doing a weekly shop with Amazon's awful website would be a miserable process; Tesco et al are already far ahead, there. I'm sure Amazon can catch up, but the idea that it has first mover advantage (except maybe in the US) is ridiculous. The big supermarkets also already have an extensive pre-existing warehouse system.
  - Kephael 8y ago
    I doubt they'll be able to compete on costs, on the retail front Amazon Go style stores are certainly the future. Legacy retailers (and grocers) are simply too labor heavy and their large retail footprint will come back to bite them. Even if last mile delivery has a driver, operational costs will be far lower.

wincy 8y ago

I live a block away from a “nice” Walmart in a nice part of town. We shopped at other more expensive grocery stores because we didn’t like the atmosphere at Walmart, it was big and overwhelming and dirty. Walmart has online pickup now. You order your groceries using their app, schedule a time, and pull up to get your groceries. It’s amazing. My wife and I order all our groceries this way. Since the minimum order price is $30, we’re wasting far less food and placing more orders. Before we’d go to Costco every two weeks, buy a bunch of perishables that would then go bad before we ate them. It has saved us money and we love it. If there’s a problem we can immediately go back to the store and get a replacement or a refund. Amazon needs to compete with THAT, and the customer service for when there’s an error, if they want to “crush” brick and mortar stores. Frankly, I don’t see what value they’d add compared to this.

Kephael 8y ago
Amazon will win because they will be able to compete on price and convenience. They don't have the massive overhead of the stores weighing them down. You're also forgetting that many young people who work in economically relevant areas of the country don't have cars. Demographics will work against these legacy retailers and grocers. The elderly who are stuck in their ways and like physical stores will become less mobile while the younger generations would prefer more convenient choices.
- HashHishBang 8y ago
  Speaking as one of those people without a car: I've got a backpack. Grocery pickup is absurdly useful. You ever had a hiking pack to whoever is bagging or try and fill it while doing self-checkout? It's not bad in all honesty but it's still more annoying than just picking it up curbside. Plus the side benefit on not whipping some kid in the face with bag straps because I turned around too fast.
- njarboe 8y ago
  "They don't have the massive overhead of the stores weighing them down." Amazon bought Whole Foods a few years back.

AlexandrB 8y ago

Except Amazon is already doing a very good job of destroying their own brand. Between how lazy they've gotten with packaging books, the supply chain ambiguity of mixed inventory, and the increasingly annoying ads for Amazon Basics products there are entire categories of stuff I will not risk buying from Amazon anymore. I may be the exception for now, but everyone has their breaking point on lazy service. It's just a matter of when the goodwill runs out.