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You know most grocery stores offered a delivery service years before SV decided to turn it into a business model. It was a mostly unadvertised service that gro
by stametseater 4y ago
You know most grocery stores offered a delivery service years before SV decided to turn it into a business model. It was a mostly unadvertised service that grocery stores ran (and likely still do run) mostly for the benefit of 'shut ins', people with disabilities or ailments that prevented them from leaving their homes.
The way it worked was pretty simple; you'd call in your order, or sometimes use the store's website or email, and the store would have one of their baggers/etc collect the requested food from the shelves and drive it out to your home. It was a free service paid for by the store, although I believe there was an expectation to tip whichever employee was using their personal car to actually make the delivery. To reiterate, the service was intended for people who couldn't go to the store themselves, not for yuppies.
- JieJie 4y agoYeah, my neighbor is blind and even though she can physically get to the grocery store just fine, she can't exactly pick out items she wants once she gets there. Having a "personal shopper" isn't a luxury for her. All this "disruption" did was make it more expensive for her to be disabled.
- golergka 4y agoWe had widely used grocery delivery service in Moscow (Russia) back in mid-00s, Ostrovok. The only difference with modern services was delivery time of day or two in advance, but for family grocery shopping it wasn't that much of an issue.
- barbazoo 4y ago> To reiterate, the service was intended for people who couldn't go to the store themselves, not for yuppies. What an odd thing to say. Why should people have to drive and spend their time at the grocery store if the grocery store can do that much more efficiently? Employees pack what looks like dozens of orders at the same time and drive them to the neigborhoods. In a densely populated area I can't imagine that being less efficient than going yourself.
- asveikau 4y ago> Why should people have to drive Want to add, with walkable cities and less car centricism you absolutely don't have to drive. Not meaning to be insensitive to less healthy people who enter into that condition through no fault of their own, but also, perhaps fewer people would be in a position that they are physically unable to shop for groceries if they didn't "have to drive", and got in the exercise of a daily walk to the grocer.
- barbazoo 4y agoI shouldn't have said "drive", I could also walk to a corner store or bike to the grocery store but unless you're single or you only buy what you need immediately you need something else. I can't buy groceries for 2 weeks for a family and haul them back on foot or bike. And that's as often as I want to go to a grocery store, max. And as I said, getting that amount of groceries delivered is even better and at the same time this is so much more energy efficient and so much less wasteful than getting these "meal prep" kits. They just don't make sense.
- JohnFen 4y ago> I can't buy groceries for 2 weeks for a family and haul them back on foot or bike. Why not? On foot might be a bit much, but on a bike, with a trailer, this isn't hard at all.
- barbazoo 4y agoI think you're projecting your lifestyle on other people, not sure what your goal is here. If this works for you, great, I'm happy for you.
- JohnFen 4y agoI was just taking issue with the "I can't". Perhaps I read that wrong, but it sounded like "It's not possible" to me. All I was saying is that it is, in fact, possible. It may not be the right solution for you, but it's certainly a possible solution.