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in a competitive market (which US groceries mostly are) if the store has to "eat the cost" of bruised fruit, then the price will necessarily have to be higher o
by fsckboy 6y ago
in a competitive market (which US groceries mostly are) if the store has to "eat the cost" of bruised fruit, then the price will necessarily have to be higher on the fruit they sell.
Think of it this way, you have fruit at home to be shared by all the members of your family, it was fine when you bought it, but now some of it is bruised. So now you own a mix of fruit: what do you do, throw away the bruised fruit, or trim it, or give a loved one the good looking one and eat the bruised one yourself? Those costs (tossing or trimming or eating slightly lower quality) have to be borne by somebody, in this case the whole family or a member of the family.
You buy a car and you buy insurance for it; that's because a car is expensive and you don't want to bear the burden of a bruised car yourself, you want to share that burden with all the other people who buy insurance; and yet, the insurance company is making money, so apparently you are paying a little extra for this decrease in the variance of quality.
Same with your theory of purchasing fruit: you are not saying (in your original comment) what you think you are saying, that bruised fruit is too expensive; what you are actually saying is that you prefer to overpay for expensive fruit all the time and not deal with imperfections. Because otherwise, if the supermarket could sell all their fruit and not just perfect fruit, and was competing against other supermarkets, then the fruit would be overall actually cheaper across the board; you say "you don't get any discount", but with time you actually would.
I explain all this because it allows you to live your life feeling less miffed.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dooglius 6y agoYes, you are correct that you are essentially paying a premium, but the issue is less about the item's cost and more about the need for time investment and physical presence--correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like it's possible to get the same level of un-bruisedness from delivery or curbside pickup that you could from going into the store and picking fruit yourself.
- Spooky23 6y agoMakes sense in economics 101. The reality is, the Instacart guy doesn't give a shit and will provide bruising as part of the service of schlepping your crap for you. The in-store shoppers don't really care either. The explanation that you're providing is really a rationalization for paying more to procure an inferior product. You're always going to have wastage of perishable items. It's much cheaper and sensical to avoid moldy strawberries, close to date meat and dairy, etc by shopping yourself, or hiring your own casual labor without some intermediary subtracting value. All of these services are hiding costs through VC largesse and exploitation. You can literally get more for less by just hiring a housekeeper and having them pick up stuff for you, but nobody does that because the costs are "above the line", and it feels less nouveau riche and more clean to have some service exploit the poor sap picking your banannas rather than talk to a human.
- fsckboy 6y ago> The explanation that you're providing is really a rationalization for paying more to procure an inferior product the explanation I gave is literally for paying less, so you missed the point of it, and you are then blaming econ 101 for your lack of understanding. And you are mixing in other factors that econ 101 covers, but the point of econ 101 is to learn to separate different factors.
- Spooky23 6y agoThe Instacart guy isn't a magic elf. The $0.05 you save on rotten fruit is offset by a $0.50 in labor. As investors tire of setting money on fire, that will become more apparent, just as it did with Uber as prices went up and quality went down.
- im3w1l 6y agoI think it's more that hiring a housekeeper is an option that most users of these services haven't given serious consideration. They don't know how it works or where they would start.
- barrkel 6y agoWhat you're missing out on is information asymmetry. If you're insuring against a risk, and you have more information than the insurer, you may be profiting and the insurer may be running a loss. If you're picking out your own groceries, you can select the pristine fruit and vegetables, and the grocery store takes the loss. With a disinterested picker, you take a portion of the loss.
- cortesoft 6y agoYou take a disproportionate portion of the loss, because in person shoppers are taking the pristine fruit, leaving more non-pristine fruit for the pickers.