4 ms·

I'm still not convinced this whole business of grocery delivery/fast food delivery is even a viable economic model. The value add is so tiny relative to the cos

I'm still not convinced this whole business of grocery delivery/fast food delivery is even a viable economic model. The value add is so tiny relative to the costs involved. An actual human being, A, must be paid to drive down to a store and deliver something for B who is too lazy to get off his couch for a burrito. The only way that would work is if A is being paid the bare minimum or if B has plenty of cash to spare. Even then, whatever value the middleman captures is supposed to fund this billion dollar startup with armies of engineers and office space and the works. I dunno, seems a bit wonky to me but maybe I'm just old fashioned.

viraptor 5y ago
> deliver something for B who is too lazy to get off his couch for a burrito That's a pretty judgmental view for the service. Try these for B: - a mother with limited transport options - a disabled person - a covid isolating person, or generally a person not feeling well and not wanting to infect others - someone with surprise visitors coming next day, trying to fit in shopping, organising the house, other tasks - or simply people like me who make a choice between spending an hour a week doing grocery shopping, or spending that time with family. (Although I get an option for pickup rather than delivery so I'm going with that)
okso 5y ago
Exactly. The model of delivery would only start to really make sense with A being an autonomous robot. Or if inequalities keep increasing between the rich B and the poor A.
DoingIsLearning 5y ago
It is misleading to bundle grocery delivery with fast food delivery. Grocery delivery is done with trucks fully loaded with orders and an optimized route for fuel efficiency. It is actually much more energy efficient to package 40 ppl grocery orders in _one_ 4.3 tonne 10' truck, and make an efficient delivery route, than to have 40 people drive to their grocery store in an empty 3 tonne vehicle. I am not sure what the situation in the US is but realistically in Europe if you have a big enough family online grocery shopping is a no-brainer. I only shop physically for very specific perishables like bread, fruit, cheeses. Have been doing it every since our family grew and our time, mental bandwith, and lower backs decayed.
- checkyoursudo 5y ago
  Definitely fruit and veg. During the pandemic, we have done a lot of pick-up orders. Let's just say that the selections are not always what I would have made. I don't blame the store workers or anything. Usually even things are mostly fine (e.g., not bruised, over/under ripe, etc). But sometimes ...
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    That comes down to stock though. Put it in another way, if I wanted to buy apples of X variety and I got to the supermarket and those apples looked crap I just wouldn't buy them, I would buy some other fruit or come back another day. However online, if I ordered x and they have in stock then they have to fulfil that order, even if the apples look like crap. I am not really sure you could improve this unless you had some form of back and forth comms between you and the warehouse.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      The crap apples shouldn't be sold. They should be sent back to the apple distributor and converted to apple pie.
      - prawn 5y ago
        I think in Australian supermarkets there is some element of this second-use that occurs in the supermarket itself. Avoids the two extra trips.
      - bagacrap 5y ago
        hard to know where each individual draws the crap line
        londons_explore 5y ago
        Thats what branding is for. A company puts their name and logo on it, and then also sets the quality standards. Cheap brands might have lower standards than premium brands. The company makes sure the stores uphold the quality standards, and stop selling through stores that hurt their brand.
unwind 5y ago
I think it's really unfair/strange to clump together grocery delivery with fast food. They are not at all the same, I mean sure both get you edible stuff to your home, but that's about it. We're a family of four, and we do get home-delivered groceries weekly now after a year of Covid and really trying to minimize time spent in stores. Doing the order is easily an hour's worth of clicking, checking fridge/freezer/pantry/elsewhere for what we need, trying to remember if we missed something or if there is some non-food item that we can get delivered at the same time (think diapers, paper towels, toothpaste, whatever) and so on. Fast food delivery we never do, it's way too expensive for the value-add, and just way more rare as a thing (buying fast food, that is). When we buy pre-made food (WFH lunches when kids are at preschool), we always to go and get it ourselves.
unishark 5y ago
> An actual human being, A, must be paid to drive down to a store and deliver something for B who is too lazy to get off his couch for a burrito. The only way that would work is if A is being paid the bare minimum or if B has plenty of cash to spare. I don't see why it has to be viewed in terms of such extremes. It's just a simple calculation of B's time versus their money. B is probably an actual human being too, so would need to drive to the store and back themselves. Maybe they prefer not to. The entire economy works this way.
mewpmewp2 5y ago
I have been doing online grocery shopping for longer than pandemic. I don't want to waste my time going to a store, filling my brain with useless trivia with where items are located and then spending rest of the time gathering said items. It can mean I am lazy, or I can use that time to do some other work I enjoy. Doesn't matter, because I don't really care if someone random judges me as lazy. I also order in all my food and hire a cleaner for my home once a month. I don't own a car, I either rent a car using apps or order a taxi. All of this has won me so much money and time. Some of the most valuable things for me besides other elements like health. So for me it is astounding how someone can't see value in those things. I am so thankful for these things and services existing, every day. They have given me so much time to do whatever I want.
cik 5y ago
Maybe not in the US? I mean here in Israel app-based grocery delivery to the home has been a thing since 2014. The price has been a constant (30 NIS ~9) and it's provided by all the chains. The difference is the model. Here, warehouse stores do them - meaning someone doesn't run around the store looking for products. The same person might get 15 boxes of cereal for 15 different orders and put one in each bag - rather than one person pick the entire order. The stores are profitable and tonnes of people do this. Anecdotally 100% of the people I know rely on this, with maybe 10% of those people being in tech. We also have an entire industry of two grocery chains where people do their own shopping, take full carts (unpaid) to the back and then have the items delivered later, which allows people to take public transit, amongst other things.
smoe 5y ago
I don't know, whether it is viable. But it is not just for the lazy. I have been using grocery deliveries once or twice a month for years mainly because I don't (want to) own a car. For me it is not about cash to spare, but just a tradeoff what I'm spending it on. What made me to a degree stop using these services is the race to the bottom that the startups in this space have started.
- chx 5y ago
  Yes, I cancelled Instacart last month and now I just go to the store and call a taxi/uber/lyft to get my stuff home. Easy...
lqet 5y ago
I don't want delivery, I want to order online and pick up my goods already in a bag. I have been using this heavily because we moved during the pandemic, and IKEA only offered such a pick up service (called "Click&Collect" in Germany). A supermarket here also offers such a service. It is extremely convenient and time-saving. Previously, a trip to IKEA usually took an entire afternoon, which is tiring especially if you have children. With "Click&Collect", you spend 30-60 minutes on your couch, reading product reviews, and you can directly measure whether some piece of furniture fits into your apartment. Pickup then usually took 5-10 minutes, everything is already on carts, you just have to load it into your car.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  I don’t get why do you want to go and pick it up yourself rather than getting it delivered? Especially for groceries where you presumably don’t have your own refrigerated van.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    You don’t need a refrigerated van if you’re driving your one order straight home from the market. We didn’t even AC in the cars when I was young and it was fine. Refrigerated vans are a solution to a problem largely introduced by the use of refrigerated vans for delivery of multiple orders.
inglor_cz 5y ago
How is that different from literally any other e-shop experience? Do you always go to a Main Street shop to buy everything, or do you order things online? Groceries are just another commodity sold online. And the "value added" is not exactly tiny. Your assumption that home delivery does not add much value compared to driving to a mall and carrying your purchased stuff back home rests on a lot of assumptions: a) you can drive and have a working car at your disposal, b) you have no other duties, such as caring for young kids or a bedridden person, or you can afford paid help, c) you are fit enough to carry the stuff you bought, d) you are not contagious, or you trust your immune system enough to interact with contagious strangers; this is not just a covid thing, even a "good" flu season has some mortality, e) there even is a suitable mall in your proximity. And another perspective: maybe driving to a mall and back is virtuous in your book, but it almost certainly isn't as eco-friendly as home delivery. A small truck carrying groceries for 20 families does not burn anywhere as much gas as 20 families driving their sedans to the mall and back home. Its route will be more efficient and only one living person, the driver, is being carried around by the car, not 20+.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Groceries can have expiration dates you might want to check, and produce and fruit quality that varies. Or frozen food that you might not be sure of how long it's been sitting outside of the freezer. Also, there are so many grocery stores (where I live at least, and in all suburban US areas I've been in), that you must be driving by one at some point in the week. The transportation costs are nil, so the only difference is the time you spend in the grocery store. Which is also very low if you're familiar with the store. Therefore, the only missing variable is how much you trust the worker that is walking around picking things up, and for me, that is very little, especially if there is a price premium with picking up a grocery order.
ghaff 5y ago
I'm not sure grocery pickup falls into this category, but there have been a lot of "businesses" over the past few years where, even though the workers are barely making minimum wage, the real cost premium is above what mainstream consumers are willing to pay. They've been being subsidized but that's obviously not a long-term solution.

viraptor 5y ago

> deliver something for B who is too lazy to get off his couch for a burrito That's a pretty judgmental view for the service. Try these for B: - a mother with limited transport options - a disabled person - a covid isolating person, or generally a person not feeling well and not wanting to infect others - someone with surprise visitors coming next day, trying to fit in shopping, organising the house, other tasks - or simply people like me who make a choice between spending an hour a week doing grocery shopping, or spending that time with family. (Although I get an option for pickup rather than delivery so I'm going with that)

okso 5y ago

Exactly. The model of delivery would only start to really make sense with A being an autonomous robot. Or if inequalities keep increasing between the rich B and the poor A.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago

It is misleading to bundle grocery delivery with fast food delivery. Grocery delivery is done with trucks fully loaded with orders and an optimized route for fuel efficiency. It is actually much more energy efficient to package 40 ppl grocery orders in _one_ 4.3 tonne 10' truck, and make an efficient delivery route, than to have 40 people drive to their grocery store in an empty 3 tonne vehicle. I am not sure what the situation in the US is but realistically in Europe if you have a big enough family online grocery shopping is a no-brainer. I only shop physically for very specific perishables like bread, fruit, cheeses. Have been doing it every since our family grew and our time, mental bandwith, and lower backs decayed.

checkyoursudo 5y ago
Definitely fruit and veg. During the pandemic, we have done a lot of pick-up orders. Let's just say that the selections are not always what I would have made. I don't blame the store workers or anything. Usually even things are mostly fine (e.g., not bruised, over/under ripe, etc). But sometimes ...
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  That comes down to stock though. Put it in another way, if I wanted to buy apples of X variety and I got to the supermarket and those apples looked crap I just wouldn't buy them, I would buy some other fruit or come back another day. However online, if I ordered x and they have in stock then they have to fulfil that order, even if the apples look like crap. I am not really sure you could improve this unless you had some form of back and forth comms between you and the warehouse.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    The crap apples shouldn't be sold. They should be sent back to the apple distributor and converted to apple pie.
    - prawn 5y ago
      I think in Australian supermarkets there is some element of this second-use that occurs in the supermarket itself. Avoids the two extra trips.
    - bagacrap 5y ago
      hard to know where each individual draws the crap line
      - londons_explore 5y ago
        Thats what branding is for. A company puts their name and logo on it, and then also sets the quality standards. Cheap brands might have lower standards than premium brands. The company makes sure the stores uphold the quality standards, and stop selling through stores that hurt their brand.

unwind 5y ago

I think it's really unfair/strange to clump together grocery delivery with fast food. They are not at all the same, I mean sure both get you edible stuff to your home, but that's about it. We're a family of four, and we do get home-delivered groceries weekly now after a year of Covid and really trying to minimize time spent in stores. Doing the order is easily an hour's worth of clicking, checking fridge/freezer/pantry/elsewhere for what we need, trying to remember if we missed something or if there is some non-food item that we can get delivered at the same time (think diapers, paper towels, toothpaste, whatever) and so on. Fast food delivery we never do, it's way too expensive for the value-add, and just way more rare as a thing (buying fast food, that is). When we buy pre-made food (WFH lunches when kids are at preschool), we always to go and get it ourselves.

unishark 5y ago

> An actual human being, A, must be paid to drive down to a store and deliver something for B who is too lazy to get off his couch for a burrito. The only way that would work is if A is being paid the bare minimum or if B has plenty of cash to spare. I don't see why it has to be viewed in terms of such extremes. It's just a simple calculation of B's time versus their money. B is probably an actual human being too, so would need to drive to the store and back themselves. Maybe they prefer not to. The entire economy works this way.

mewpmewp2 5y ago

I have been doing online grocery shopping for longer than pandemic. I don't want to waste my time going to a store, filling my brain with useless trivia with where items are located and then spending rest of the time gathering said items. It can mean I am lazy, or I can use that time to do some other work I enjoy. Doesn't matter, because I don't really care if someone random judges me as lazy. I also order in all my food and hire a cleaner for my home once a month. I don't own a car, I either rent a car using apps or order a taxi. All of this has won me so much money and time. Some of the most valuable things for me besides other elements like health. So for me it is astounding how someone can't see value in those things. I am so thankful for these things and services existing, every day. They have given me so much time to do whatever I want.

cik 5y ago

Maybe not in the US? I mean here in Israel app-based grocery delivery to the home has been a thing since 2014. The price has been a constant (30 NIS ~9) and it's provided by all the chains. The difference is the model. Here, warehouse stores do them - meaning someone doesn't run around the store looking for products. The same person might get 15 boxes of cereal for 15 different orders and put one in each bag - rather than one person pick the entire order. The stores are profitable and tonnes of people do this. Anecdotally 100% of the people I know rely on this, with maybe 10% of those people being in tech. We also have an entire industry of two grocery chains where people do their own shopping, take full carts (unpaid) to the back and then have the items delivered later, which allows people to take public transit, amongst other things.

smoe 5y ago

I don't know, whether it is viable. But it is not just for the lazy. I have been using grocery deliveries once or twice a month for years mainly because I don't (want to) own a car. For me it is not about cash to spare, but just a tradeoff what I'm spending it on. What made me to a degree stop using these services is the race to the bottom that the startups in this space have started.

chx 5y ago
Yes, I cancelled Instacart last month and now I just go to the store and call a taxi/uber/lyft to get my stuff home. Easy...

lqet 5y ago

I don't want delivery, I want to order online and pick up my goods already in a bag. I have been using this heavily because we moved during the pandemic, and IKEA only offered such a pick up service (called "Click&Collect" in Germany). A supermarket here also offers such a service. It is extremely convenient and time-saving. Previously, a trip to IKEA usually took an entire afternoon, which is tiring especially if you have children. With "Click&Collect", you spend 30-60 minutes on your couch, reading product reviews, and you can directly measure whether some piece of furniture fits into your apartment. Pickup then usually took 5-10 minutes, everything is already on carts, you just have to load it into your car.

chrisseaton 5y ago
I don’t get why do you want to go and pick it up yourself rather than getting it delivered? Especially for groceries where you presumably don’t have your own refrigerated van.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  You don’t need a refrigerated van if you’re driving your one order straight home from the market. We didn’t even AC in the cars when I was young and it was fine. Refrigerated vans are a solution to a problem largely introduced by the use of refrigerated vans for delivery of multiple orders.

inglor_cz 5y ago

How is that different from literally any other e-shop experience? Do you always go to a Main Street shop to buy everything, or do you order things online? Groceries are just another commodity sold online. And the "value added" is not exactly tiny. Your assumption that home delivery does not add much value compared to driving to a mall and carrying your purchased stuff back home rests on a lot of assumptions: a) you can drive and have a working car at your disposal, b) you have no other duties, such as caring for young kids or a bedridden person, or you can afford paid help, c) you are fit enough to carry the stuff you bought, d) you are not contagious, or you trust your immune system enough to interact with contagious strangers; this is not just a covid thing, even a "good" flu season has some mortality, e) there even is a suitable mall in your proximity. And another perspective: maybe driving to a mall and back is virtuous in your book, but it almost certainly isn't as eco-friendly as home delivery. A small truck carrying groceries for 20 families does not burn anywhere as much gas as 20 families driving their sedans to the mall and back home. Its route will be more efficient and only one living person, the driver, is being carried around by the car, not 20+.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Groceries can have expiration dates you might want to check, and produce and fruit quality that varies. Or frozen food that you might not be sure of how long it's been sitting outside of the freezer. Also, there are so many grocery stores (where I live at least, and in all suburban US areas I've been in), that you must be driving by one at some point in the week. The transportation costs are nil, so the only difference is the time you spend in the grocery store. Which is also very low if you're familiar with the store. Therefore, the only missing variable is how much you trust the worker that is walking around picking things up, and for me, that is very little, especially if there is a price premium with picking up a grocery order.

ghaff 5y ago

I'm not sure grocery pickup falls into this category, but there have been a lot of "businesses" over the past few years where, even though the workers are barely making minimum wage, the real cost premium is above what mainstream consumers are willing to pay. They've been being subsidized but that's obviously not a long-term solution.