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Who is demanding 15-minute grocery delivery? That's not how people buy groceries. People are accustomed to building up a list over the course of a week and goin

by imgabe 4y ago

Who is demanding 15-minute grocery delivery? That's not how people buy groceries. People are accustomed to building up a list over the course of a week and going to the store to buy it on the weekend. This is just not a need anyone has. People have been trying to do this since 1999 with kozmo.com and it's just not worthwhile to pay a human being to hand deliver low value items.

WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
I just wanted to say that when I had been alone at home recovering from a surgery, I thought it would be bloody fucking nice to have such a service, even at a premium. I ended up paying a premium anyway — for taxi rides to the supermarket and back anyway. Not to mention how exhausted it had made me.
bluedino 4y ago
I run to the store during the week to pick up 3/4 things or whatever I need to make a meal at the last minute. Sounds like a good fit. People that only go to the store every 1 or 2 weeks would be my parents or grandparents.
cosmodisk 4y ago
Depends where you live. In many places in Europe people shop for 1/2/3 days only because of the close proximity to the shops.
- Joe8Bit 4y ago
  This is a really interesting point and it resonates with my experience. When I moved to the US from Europe I was suddenly in a world where people had enormous fridges and freezers and could buy a massive amount of food at a time. They would never have fit in dinky little European apartment before! This is also my experience for folks that live in NY.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    Large fridges are available here; I think there's a lot more to it than fridge size. I suspect that big fridges are popular in the US because in much of the US shopping is extremely inconvenient, rather than shopping being inconvenient _because big fridges are popular_.
    - randallsquared 4y ago
      Shopping is always inconvenient. Even if the shopping is online and delivered, it’s pretty inconvenient to have to find stuff and schedule a time and take the delivered groceries in when they arrive. One of the features some of the newer 15 minute delivery shops have is allowing you to select only items in stock, which saves all of the actual store time, since you don’t have to be glued to your phone for the inevitable questions.
      - cosmodisk 4y ago
        I live 100 metres from a store that sells pretty much anything from food to alcohol and then some more. Within 10 min walk I've got access to see much stuff that I would die before trying it all. If I jump in a car, I've got access to enough shopping that I could buy anything from a cake to a sofa. it can be convenient but yes, not everyone would have such access to products.
      - rsynnott 4y ago
        I walk past two supermarkets and a bunch of smaller shops on my way home from work; shopping is fairly convenient, so I shop basically on demand. What _would_ be inconvenient is doing a "weekly shop"; I don't have a car, and even if I did, the nearby supermarkets don't have parking. So, no need for a big fridge.
  - nikanj 4y ago
    In Helsinki, my grocery store (~Safeway) is in the building across the street, and open 24/7. In BC, the store was a 10-minute car drive away, and open 9am-9pm.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  Yeah, I walk past two smallish supermarkets on the way home from work, and I'm a 30 min walk from a couple of big ones. I never shop for a week. That said, I also have no use for 15 minute grocery delivery because of this. And it seems like it would only work in urban/inner suburban areas; it's not going to be practical to provide this sort of service in outer suburbs/exurbs, and they're the only ones who'd have a use for it.
lm28469 4y ago
> People are accustomed to building up a list over the course of a week and going to the store to buy it on the weekend. I go to the supermarket everyday and buy what I need for this specific day, going shopping once every weekend is kind of a boomer thing here Lots of people use grocery delivery here too (Berlin), but I find that extremely weird given the abundance of supermarkets. It rubs me the wrong way to pay modern slaves to get toilet paper and veggies delivered to my door when I can walk down the street and get it for 20% less
- bowsamic 4y ago
  Interestingly in the UK grocery deliveries are very popular but they are still a weekly thing: people buy £100 of it and it comes in 8 plastic bags or something. Very good for old people or people who are busy with children. You have to book the slot quite far in advanced though. You also get to reject stuff at the door if you don’t like the look of it and you get refunded. But as you say Europeans are generally more used to frequent small shops, so it makes sense that the delivery services are more fast paced and based around smaller shops. Fruit and veg are also far more expensive (at least 1.5 to 2x) in Germany than in the uk by weight, so people end up with less of such heavy items
- danielbln 4y ago
  I have stuff delivered because it's a whole thing taking a toddler shopping. Getting dressed, getting there, being bombarded with ads and product placement that is geared to reel in kids. I tip well and try to not make use of the rapid delivery services too much (instead I choose to use the delivery service of the big supermarket chains that deliver after a few hours or next day). Not having to go to actual shops when you have kids is a true God's end. (also Berlin).
mattlondon 4y ago
Sounds pretty useful to me. People were accustomed to just having a dumb phone and using a desktop computer for things before - no one needs a smartphone! Of course that totally changed. I order all my groceries online and have them delivered on a regular basis and yes I build up a list but there are always (always! every-week always) things that are needed ad hoc, and other things that wont last between weekly shops (e.g. fresh fruit often wont last a week so you have strawberries for a couple of days then none the rest of the week) So classic example of where this on-demand delivery is useful could be you've planned a big meal and forgot one key ingredient, or that key ingredient has gone off, or (as often happens) the online grocery delivery didn't have that ingredient on the day of delivery then what do you do? Just not eat that day? Throw out the rest of the fresh ingredients you were going to use to cook that meal that you now cannot cook? Perhaps try another recipe only then to realise that you are missing other things you need for that other thing you are going to cook? Or what if you just forgot to order something you need? Or you have surprise guests and no coffee left? Or unexpectedly ran out of something - e.g. ran out of baby nappies/diapers because the poor kid got diarrhoea and is using them up at 4x the speed of usual .... these aren't the sort of things you can just wait a few days for the next big shop for! For me right now I just drive 10 mins to the nearest supermarket and pick up any bits (and if I am going there are almost always other things I can get at the same time while there - e.g. more fresh fruit or whatever), but I would certainly use one of these services more in the future if they continue to exist. I personally can wait a few days for new avocados to arrive if mine have gone bad before I've eaten them (the Avocado Lottery is always cruel), but some stuff simple cannot wait (e.g. nappies, baby food, personal hygiene stuff etc) I do agree though that for the frivolous/impulse use is kinda silly - e.g. you decide you just want an ice cream or a can of coke or something.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  Sounds like a small market and not a very good business.
  - mattlondon 4y ago
    Well the demand is clearly there as these things took off and people use them. The profitability is the question here though - the market clearly wants this service, but at what price? To make it so that it is profitable for the business while also offering a fair wage to the workers will probably increase prices to the point where it is no longer desirable from users.
subpixel 4y ago
Meanwhile, grocery pick-up has revolutionized the process. All the convenience of ordering online (including the ability to repeat your last order) with none of the expense of delivery to factor into the offering. Plus coupons! I’ve been in a grocery store a handful of times in the last two years and it’s beyond aggravating how long it takes to find things, to roam around the store, and to deal with checkout. It’s also interesting to see how often my parents “pop over” to the store for a single item. Not having that option (its a 2-hr trip now) has made me plan much better than I used to.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  Product shortages have made grocery delivery/pickup a complete waste of time where I live. I did quite a few of them during the height of the Covid restrictions, and kept at it for a little while after they eased up. But for those serval months, I received the shopping list that I had ordered exactly 0 times. Which makes planning what to cook infinitely frustrating. The food shortages are still there when you go into the store yourself, but if you find some key ingredients missing you can at least pick some sensible combination of ingredients for alternative meals, instead of discovering after the fact that somebody at your local grocery store though radishes were a reasonable alternative to the sold-out spinach.
  - subpixel 4y ago
    Yeah, if you're cooking tonight something with critical ingredients I might not rely on the pickup for that, but they email me what is out so I'm not caught unaware. It's basically just like if I went to the store to get organic chickpeas and they didn't have them, except I know that _without going to the store_. Plus I just got two weeks of groceries so it's all good.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I haven't used grocery delivery in ages, but the one time I did because I was on crutches so doing a full grocery shopping was really awkward that was my issue: they didn't make reasonable substitutions, made unreasonable substitutions, or fresh goods didn't look great.
thematrixturtle 4y ago
I occasionally use these services when I realize I've forgotten to buy something and I'm up against a deadline so I can't leave the house (guests coming over, child sick, etc). But this happens a couple of times per year tops, vs my regular bulk grocery delivery every few days.

by imgabe 4y ago

WesolyKubeczek 4y ago

I just wanted to say that when I had been alone at home recovering from a surgery, I thought it would be bloody fucking nice to have such a service, even at a premium. I ended up paying a premium anyway — for taxi rides to the supermarket and back anyway. Not to mention how exhausted it had made me.

bluedino 4y ago

I run to the store during the week to pick up 3/4 things or whatever I need to make a meal at the last minute. Sounds like a good fit. People that only go to the store every 1 or 2 weeks would be my parents or grandparents.

cosmodisk 4y ago

Depends where you live. In many places in Europe people shop for 1/2/3 days only because of the close proximity to the shops.

Joe8Bit 4y ago
This is a really interesting point and it resonates with my experience. When I moved to the US from Europe I was suddenly in a world where people had enormous fridges and freezers and could buy a massive amount of food at a time. They would never have fit in dinky little European apartment before! This is also my experience for folks that live in NY.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  Large fridges are available here; I think there's a lot more to it than fridge size. I suspect that big fridges are popular in the US because in much of the US shopping is extremely inconvenient, rather than shopping being inconvenient _because big fridges are popular_.
  - randallsquared 4y ago
    Shopping is always inconvenient. Even if the shopping is online and delivered, it’s pretty inconvenient to have to find stuff and schedule a time and take the delivered groceries in when they arrive. One of the features some of the newer 15 minute delivery shops have is allowing you to select only items in stock, which saves all of the actual store time, since you don’t have to be glued to your phone for the inevitable questions.
    - cosmodisk 4y ago
      I live 100 metres from a store that sells pretty much anything from food to alcohol and then some more. Within 10 min walk I've got access to see much stuff that I would die before trying it all. If I jump in a car, I've got access to enough shopping that I could buy anything from a cake to a sofa. it can be convenient but yes, not everyone would have such access to products.
    - rsynnott 4y ago
      I walk past two supermarkets and a bunch of smaller shops on my way home from work; shopping is fairly convenient, so I shop basically on demand. What _would_ be inconvenient is doing a "weekly shop"; I don't have a car, and even if I did, the nearby supermarkets don't have parking. So, no need for a big fridge.
- nikanj 4y ago
  In Helsinki, my grocery store (~Safeway) is in the building across the street, and open 24/7. In BC, the store was a 10-minute car drive away, and open 9am-9pm.
rsynnott 4y ago
Yeah, I walk past two smallish supermarkets on the way home from work, and I'm a 30 min walk from a couple of big ones. I never shop for a week. That said, I also have no use for 15 minute grocery delivery because of this. And it seems like it would only work in urban/inner suburban areas; it's not going to be practical to provide this sort of service in outer suburbs/exurbs, and they're the only ones who'd have a use for it.

lm28469 4y ago

> People are accustomed to building up a list over the course of a week and going to the store to buy it on the weekend. I go to the supermarket everyday and buy what I need for this specific day, going shopping once every weekend is kind of a boomer thing here Lots of people use grocery delivery here too (Berlin), but I find that extremely weird given the abundance of supermarkets. It rubs me the wrong way to pay modern slaves to get toilet paper and veggies delivered to my door when I can walk down the street and get it for 20% less

bowsamic 4y ago
Interestingly in the UK grocery deliveries are very popular but they are still a weekly thing: people buy £100 of it and it comes in 8 plastic bags or something. Very good for old people or people who are busy with children. You have to book the slot quite far in advanced though. You also get to reject stuff at the door if you don’t like the look of it and you get refunded. But as you say Europeans are generally more used to frequent small shops, so it makes sense that the delivery services are more fast paced and based around smaller shops. Fruit and veg are also far more expensive (at least 1.5 to 2x) in Germany than in the uk by weight, so people end up with less of such heavy items
danielbln 4y ago
I have stuff delivered because it's a whole thing taking a toddler shopping. Getting dressed, getting there, being bombarded with ads and product placement that is geared to reel in kids. I tip well and try to not make use of the rapid delivery services too much (instead I choose to use the delivery service of the big supermarket chains that deliver after a few hours or next day). Not having to go to actual shops when you have kids is a true God's end. (also Berlin).

mattlondon 4y ago

Sounds pretty useful to me. People were accustomed to just having a dumb phone and using a desktop computer for things before - no one needs a smartphone! Of course that totally changed. I order all my groceries online and have them delivered on a regular basis and yes I build up a list but there are always (always! every-week always) things that are needed ad hoc, and other things that wont last between weekly shops (e.g. fresh fruit often wont last a week so you have strawberries for a couple of days then none the rest of the week) So classic example of where this on-demand delivery is useful could be you've planned a big meal and forgot one key ingredient, or that key ingredient has gone off, or (as often happens) the online grocery delivery didn't have that ingredient on the day of delivery then what do you do? Just not eat that day? Throw out the rest of the fresh ingredients you were going to use to cook that meal that you now cannot cook? Perhaps try another recipe only then to realise that you are missing other things you need for that other thing you are going to cook? Or what if you just forgot to order something you need? Or you have surprise guests and no coffee left? Or unexpectedly ran out of something - e.g. ran out of baby nappies/diapers because the poor kid got diarrhoea and is using them up at 4x the speed of usual .... these aren't the sort of things you can just wait a few days for the next big shop for! For me right now I just drive 10 mins to the nearest supermarket and pick up any bits (and if I am going there are almost always other things I can get at the same time while there - e.g. more fresh fruit or whatever), but I would certainly use one of these services more in the future if they continue to exist. I personally can wait a few days for new avocados to arrive if mine have gone bad before I've eaten them (the Avocado Lottery is always cruel), but some stuff simple cannot wait (e.g. nappies, baby food, personal hygiene stuff etc) I do agree though that for the frivolous/impulse use is kinda silly - e.g. you decide you just want an ice cream or a can of coke or something.

kareemsabri 4y ago
Sounds like a small market and not a very good business.
- mattlondon 4y ago
  Well the demand is clearly there as these things took off and people use them. The profitability is the question here though - the market clearly wants this service, but at what price? To make it so that it is profitable for the business while also offering a fair wage to the workers will probably increase prices to the point where it is no longer desirable from users.

subpixel 4y ago

Meanwhile, grocery pick-up has revolutionized the process. All the convenience of ordering online (including the ability to repeat your last order) with none of the expense of delivery to factor into the offering. Plus coupons! I’ve been in a grocery store a handful of times in the last two years and it’s beyond aggravating how long it takes to find things, to roam around the store, and to deal with checkout. It’s also interesting to see how often my parents “pop over” to the store for a single item. Not having that option (its a 2-hr trip now) has made me plan much better than I used to.

AmericanChopper 4y ago
Product shortages have made grocery delivery/pickup a complete waste of time where I live. I did quite a few of them during the height of the Covid restrictions, and kept at it for a little while after they eased up. But for those serval months, I received the shopping list that I had ordered exactly 0 times. Which makes planning what to cook infinitely frustrating. The food shortages are still there when you go into the store yourself, but if you find some key ingredients missing you can at least pick some sensible combination of ingredients for alternative meals, instead of discovering after the fact that somebody at your local grocery store though radishes were a reasonable alternative to the sold-out spinach.
- subpixel 4y ago
  Yeah, if you're cooking tonight something with critical ingredients I might not rely on the pickup for that, but they email me what is out so I'm not caught unaware. It's basically just like if I went to the store to get organic chickpeas and they didn't have them, except I know that _without going to the store_. Plus I just got two weeks of groceries so it's all good.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I haven't used grocery delivery in ages, but the one time I did because I was on crutches so doing a full grocery shopping was really awkward that was my issue: they didn't make reasonable substitutions, made unreasonable substitutions, or fresh goods didn't look great.

thematrixturtle 4y ago

I occasionally use these services when I realize I've forgotten to buy something and I'm up against a deadline so I can't leave the house (guests coming over, child sick, etc). But this happens a couple of times per year tops, vs my regular bulk grocery delivery every few days.