Sometimes people are right and companies have to go back having wasted millions on crap and hindering progress because they had to copy bad ideas from others seeing only the money that is being made as a result of marketing and not features or usability.
Some examples: Apple's touchbar ESC key or the super low profile non-replacable keyboard, vehicles that switches to touch screen and capacitive button interfaces for critical controls resulting in less safe driving experience, Apple's iPhone "your holding it wrong" decorative metal frame, Apple's refusal to add NFC or wireless charging for years because of the metal back, there are hundreds more.
One example was QuarkXpress vs InDesign. One was based on traditional ways of working, and brought a paradigm shift towards true digital publishing concepts.
Not sure what you could do in one and not the other, but you sure had a lot of cranky greybeards when their shops had to switch, because they had to learn new ways of thinking.
You’d also run into the same situation if you had a young whipper-snapper go into a QuarkXpress shop.
The number of times I accidentally closed an almost-filled-out modal because a few molecules of my finger accidentally brushed the escape key on that @#$&* thing...
> Personally, I now save myself a lot of time by not trying to explain to people why they are wrong.
This is 100% it. Most people don't have the cognitive capacity to understand anything that differs meaningfully from the status quo. It's just not productive to pretend they do. It's no different from talking to a young child and insisting that they understand everything at the level adults do.
I personally still prefer a shopping basket to a shopping cart, it “allows” me to buy less stuff, so less money spent. It’s also nice that with less stuff bought you can take the tram or even take a walk on your way home afterwards, no need for a car-ride.
I did this for a few months right after work, which was in walking range. Eventually I went back to "shopping big" once every week after I moved and switched my employer, though. But it's doable.
ah yes, the considerable inconvenience part of my comment.
e: I know that a lot of people do this (often because they don't own cars), but having lived in cities my whole life and done both approaches at various times, the infrequent large shipping trip is much faster when amortized over two weeks.
and for those saying all my produce is going to be spoiled or I must just be eating processed foods... absolutely not.
Do you live in a suburban environment? Because where I live it's not unusual to pass the grocery store every day while walking back home and buy groceries for the day. It's only for the big shopping trip on the weekends that I use the trolley (and even then the trip is done on foot).
Why do you have the big shopping trip on the weekends?
I have never lived in a suburb in my life, I am maybe 2 minutes walking from a small grocer and 5 from a larger. Still definitely save time (and money) by shopping big biweekly at the large grocer.
> ah yes, the considerable inconvenience part of my comment.
Maybe in suburbia. In cities without insane rents and healthy work/life balances (IE: not NYC), there are often many grocery stores that make regular grocery shopping quite easy. (And rather fresh.)
Also regular grocery shopping means that people aren't loading up carts with 40+ items and in turn need 10 minutes to check out.
Grocery shopping becomes a non-item and promotes healthier inside cooking.
I have never ever lived in a suburb and what I am saying is still true. It is simple economies of scale in relation to checking out time, if you go every day you are going to be spending more time than I do amortized over two weeks.
We shop weekly (taking about an hour from leaving the house to returning, less when we frequently manage to attach it to a trip where we’re already out).
Working from home, there’s obviously no grocery store for me to pass by on my commute, so daily shopping would be 30 minutes a day (45 if I walked it) instead of 60 minutes once a week. That’s about the same as adding back my entire pre-COVID commute time. I’ll stick to weekly and spend the extra 2 hours per week doing something else.
This is why I started using instacart. I'd go to the grocery store a couple times a week for a handful of items, but would have to wait in line for 20 minutes while people checked out a mountain of stuff.
It's easy to hate on Amazon these days, but there's an Amazon grocery store near me that has buggies with a bunch of tech on them. I throw all my items in the buggy and I push it out the store and receive an emailed receipt. I don't have to wait in line. I like instacart too, but occasionally I just want to browse so I can muster up some recipes in my head.
I live near one of these too. The tech is nice but the grocery quality is terrible. Never have I had so much food go bad before the date printed on the package.
10 minutes to check out every two weeks compared to 14 separate shopping trips that take 5 minutes each to check out (and 10-30 minutes to travel and from the market each visit in either case) isn't significant.
In suburbia it would be the most convenient, because suburbanites drive everywhere anyway. If your market is at the end of your block, it's still going to take you 15 minutes to get there and back in the best case.
It really depends where you live. In some place like the US suburbs where the nearest grocery store is a 10+ min drive away yeah it can be a considerable inconvenience. But when you live in a city centre and it's a couple min detour from your walk home it's not a big deal. You can have fresher produce, fresh meat, breads that don't need to be shelf stable for a week, etc. It doesn't have to be inconvenient and it can bring a lot of advantages.
I have only ever lived in city centers, it is still faster to buy in bulk. I am vegan so maybe I am not appropriately weighting the fresh meat concerns, most of the stuff I buy does not spoil as easily.
Don't you buy bread? Bread spoils in a few days unless you put a lot of shit in it and every day stored makes it taste worse. Or even most fruits and vegetables, they taste significantly worse after a week.
People who shops just once a week can't value the freshness of what they eat at all. Or they just eat dry/frozen/industrial treated wares that don't spoil easily, but eating fresh really tastes a lot better.
Okay, the bread point is true - I will grant you that. I happen to live very close to a small market but wouldn't buy anything other than bread there because they certainly charge for the convenience. You can also bag and freeze bread, but there is a decrease in quality.
Just disagree on vegetables, I am a massive veggie lover and the difference is not nearly as much as you are making it out to be. I don't each much processed food.
I also don't eat animal products, which might be influencing my opinion since I perceive those as fast to spoil.
I typically use a fridge, so my vegetables do not spoil in a few days. I'm assuming you are talking about storing without a fridge because vegetables do not spoil after a few days in the fridge.
Not in Europe. Maybe the reason it is crap in USA is because people don't shop daily and hence they don't buy good bread there? If you optimize bread to taste good after a week instead of tasting good after a day then I can see why American brands put so much sugar in their breads.
I am 100% born and raised euro :) mainstream bread is still crap. Take a look at bread labels. Maybe our bread is not as bad as US, but there’s tons of sugar and other additives. And raising procedures are cutting corners.
Sometimes I buy high quality bread from a small bakery. Tastes great and stays great. I find this applies to rye bread only. White bread doesn’t seem to work this way.
I look at the labels, the only ingredients marked on the bread I buy is wheat flour and salt. There are many brands with more stuff in them, sure, but not all are like that. Doesn't last very long though.
This “bad US supermarket bread” doesn’t exist in California. We have even surpassed whole wheat and only eat sprouted seed breads and something that claims to be keto bread somehow.
It does exist in Japan. You may think they’re healthy but they eat the worst wheat products imaginable. Even white bread isn’t white enough for them; they cut the crusts off their 711 sandwiches and have whiter than white meat buns.
That really depends on the country, even in Europe.
Some are good, some are bad.
Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece have usually pretty good bread in your typical supermarket.
Northern countries tend to fare worse in my experience.
And then there're different breads. Northern/east? style rye bread vs south/west? wheat. Both are different how well they stay for longer time and how you can mess them up.
I don't eat bread fast enough for a full loaf (heck, even a half) that spoils in a few days to be worth paying money for.
Heidelberg bread is pretty reliably decent quality, nearly always stays good for the amount of time it takes me to eat a full loaf, and is made with good ingredients.
It’s not terribly inconvenient if the store is in walking distance. Especially if work’s in walking distance and the store’s on your way home from work. Or if you work from home. I’ve been in this situation too, it’s really nice. Hit up the store a couple of times a week, get what you need.
The walk doesn't count because it's two blocks away and I walk anyway around regardless of whether I'm grocery shopping, but sure, throw in 3x5 minutes walking for 3 grocery store trips a week (I average 1 or 2 a week, but whatever.)
To that 3x5 minutes of walking to and from the store, add 3x10 minutes for walking around the aisles picking food off the shelf, and another 3x5 minutes for checkout. That adds up to an hour a week. That's far short of "a few" hours.
5 minute walk to the store means 10 round trip, let's say 25 total with your other numbers (although I think your aisles estimate is an overestimate given it should scale by how much stuff you are getting), then multiplying by 14 as the person I was replying to says they go daily and I go biweekly and I save ~5 hours per biweekly large trip I go on.
A walk is valuable in itself though, if you don't walk to the store you have to walk somewhere else to get that exercise. Hence I tend to say that walking is free while driving costs time, at least until you fill your need to move.
Five minutes was for the round trip, but if you want a 10 minute round trip you still fall well short of two hours a week. I think you're overestimating walk times though, a casual stroll for 5 minutes gets you a quarter of a mile. In the city where I live there are three grocery stores within a quarter mile of me. The closest is a tenth of a mile.
Upthread you did respond to somebody saying daily, but the comment I responded to was itself a response to somebody saying "Hit up the store a couple of times a week, get what you need." To which you responded that it would take hours. I interpret "a couple of times a week" to mean every other day, or about 3 times a week.
It also depends on where you live. For me going to the supermarket means walking 60 meters to the next one across the street. Except for when I lived on the countryside I never lived anywhere where going to the supermarket by car would have been faster than just walking there.
Now if you walk there, all the stuff that you can buy is the stuff that you can carry. What I can carry is less than fits into a shopping cart, so I tend not to use a shopping cart, because I can feel on my shoulder what I am willing to carry home. If I'd take the car I'd have to find a parking lot when returning – and dependend on which one I find I might have to carry stuff anyways.
I guess european cities are very different to US cities in that regard.
Maybe you walk to the shops if they are close enough?
If not, that sounds wasteful.
Personally I try to spend as little time in the store as possible, so when I am in there I'll take extra of whatever keeps just so that I don't have to be in the store again any time soon. Better to spend an extra 5m grabbing everything for the next week than to come in again in two days time.
I used to shop on a daily basis. Lately, though, I cannot know that food I want will be available on a daily basis, so I buy in bulk when it is available. This week diet soda is not on the shelves, but at least jumbo eggs are, and that’s rare. I only have this problem on the west coast, so I suspect it’s a local distribution issue; I’m looking forward to moving back to the east coast, where groceries are more plentiful.
I haven't spent much time on the West Coast, but this surprises me. California is the real "Garden State" in terms of produce production. Can other people verify this or offer a theory why this would be the case?
Groceries aren’t that good in NYC because they won’t allow enough warehouses to be built; IIRC this leads to produce being older and sometimes spoiled in stores.
Other places on the east coast do have better groceries than NorCal and proximity to farms doesn’t seem to matter that much. Which makes sense; “eating local” and “farm to table” are not actually real things, wouldn’t be good for the environment if they were, and are mostly products of green meme boomers’ wishful thinking.
Things randomly not being available really underwent a step change that hasn't been reversed in the period since 2020. The best solution to that which I found, in NYC, was to order as much as possible through Amazon Fresh (really Prime Now was better, but for whatever reason they killed it in favor of the worse version). The benefit of that is that it only takes a moment to check if things are in stock, and if they're not in stock, it just won't let me order them. If they are in stock, I bulk order (best example is, as you said, diet soda).
Until I moved out of Manhattan recently, the absolute best shopping experience was Gorillas, which had the "not available in the app if it's not available in real life" experience of Fresh, but also delivery in near real-time. I have started meals, found that I was missing an ingredient, and ordered it through Gorillas with no disruption to the meal prep time.
that seems horribly inefficient considering wasted time on the way to/from shop and time spent in queue waiting at checkout, so instead of doing this 1-2x a week you spend like 3 times more time on these fixed items and let's ignore the promotions especially for bigger packages/bulk purchases
I don't think it's really doable unless you are single and you have big chain right on the way from work, otherwise small shops in convenient location next to your house will charge you premium compared to big discount chains
There is, it costs less than 10 minutes per day extra and you get quite a bit of freedom from it and at the same time don't have to figure out every meal in advance and can adapt at the last minute.
I do think people being reluctant to plan their meals is a large part of why this is less common (also most people don't seem to cook as much as I do so it might not add up as much).
but stated otherwise, you are saying that my getting a big order saves me 2 hours every time I do it. 10 minutes is also almost certainly an underestimate, assuming you live a 5 minute walk from the grocery store.
Well, the time and inconvenience to plan for two weeks easily surpasses two hours for me.
And having to take the car. Sure, I'd pick a cheaper place with greater options when I go big but that is also a very small price to pay for the convenience.
No, it takes less than a minute extra walk from my daily commute (walking), the rest of the nine minutes are to compensate for traversing the grocery store multiple times and wait in line at checkout.
If I expand it by another ~4 minutes I have other options as well.
If time was of extreme mindless essence I'd also take the bike.
2 weeks is maybe 6-8 cooked meals + leftovers, my partner and I will take maybe 15 minutes selecting 3-4 meals each from things we have cooked in the past or we would like to explore.
Going daily to the grocery store costs lots of more time. The vast majority of people do not live a 1 minute walk from a grocery store, even in dense urban areas.
I don't live a 1 minute walk from a grocery store either (well, I do, but I don't use that one), but I walk past a few on my 20 minute walk to work. And that have been the case for all of my life in all cities and apartments where I've lived.
Doesn't apply to everyone of course (using a bike rather than walking dramatically helps though), but it does tie back to the US urban planning leaving a lot to be desired.
> The vast majority of people do not live a 1 minute walk from a grocery store, even in dense urban areas.
In the US, which was the point of my original comment. Here in Berlin I have at least 4 stores (Edeka, Lidl, Al Natura and a no-name Bio Markt ) in a 200m radius.
(edit: I am not one to complain about downvotes, but it is ridiculous to see this comment in gray, yet no one able to actually address the point. Bad urban planning and car-dependency in North America is intertwined with a lot of cultural aspects of the society, including this ridiculous notion that groceries are "inconvenient" and therefore better if done in bulk and/or less frequently)
The urban planning in the US was intentional; rather than bad it was evil. Berkeley invented “residential only zoning” to create neighborhoods of white office workers because Chinese immigrants were thought to run businesses out of their homes and wanted to ban them. (You can just look up their city council meeting minutes and they’d say this.)
These days you might face resistance to allowing light industrial again because people would accuse it of creating traffic and possibly leading people to park in front of their house - Nextdoor posters’ main principle is they should be able to park everywhere for free and nobody else should.
> Well, the time and inconvenience to plan for two weeks
Do people really do that? The majority of what I get is the same across trips.
Also there's a thing we do that the daily shoppers sound unaware of: It's called a grocery list. A pad of paper left on the countertop that, at any time over those weeks, anyone in the house can add an item to if they want something different or know we're about to run out of. There's almost no planning involved.
> 10 minutes is also almost certainly an underestimate, assuming you live a 5 minute walk from the grocery store.
That depends, it's recommended to walk a certain amount every day to stay healthy. If the trip to the grocery store is part of that, then you don't have to count it in the time spent.
If you are shopping mostly food that is processed and that favors longevity over quality and freshness, sure. If you have a minimal amount of care for what you and your family eat, you will be buying every other day anyway.
Also, if you watch the video you will see that bi-weekly driving/parking for groceries eats more of your time budget than multiple small trips to a well-located shop.
A head of lettuce easily lasts 2 weeks in a fridge; loose or chopped lettuce lasts maybe half as long. Fruit last in the fruit basket on my counter, not even the fridge, for two weeks at least. Grapes I put in the fridge, and they last for weeks before they start to raisin up.
Like I said: food in the US is designed for longevity, not for flavor or general quality. Organic stuff and local produce are not like that. They don't last as long. I for one can not eat lettuce that has been on the fridge for more than 3 days.
> I for one can not eat lettuce that has been on the fridge for more than 3 days.
Maybe you refuse to, but you could. An organic head of lettuce easily lasts a week or more in the fridge. Anyway, the extent to which produce has been "designed" is greatly overstated. Two hundred years ago people used to store apples in barrels for weeks if not months.
> Like I said: food in the US is designed for longevity, not for flavor or general quality. Organic stuff and local produce are not like that. They don't last as long. I for one can not eat lettuce that has been on the fridge for more than 3 days.
I'm not in the US, I buy organic and local produce at a farmers market. They usually last two weeks in the fridge.
If they are lasting only three days for you, maybe you are buying produce that is already over a week old.
At least here in France, fresh meat and fish won't last 2 weeks. Usually 5 days at most, more often 3/4 days. Some fruits that are bought when they're very ripe won't last long too. Bread of course (technically it will last a long time, but after a day or two the texture is not as good).
Plenty of local produce has just one or few harvests a year. if you buy it 2 weeks later, it just means it was 2 weeks longer in storage of distributors.
> there is no world in which shopping at the grocer every day is more convenient than shopping once every 1.5 or even 2 weeks or so
I was with you until this rather extreme statement.
It depends a lot on what "convenient" means. If you want fresh produce and meat and don't have the huge fridges that seem to exist in most American households, it's a lot more convenient to shop for fresh, newly arrived stuff at a small neighborhood grocer's every 2-3 days.
It's also a form of social contact, another thing which isn't really included in "convenience", but maybe should be; given how many people are talking about mental health problems caused by lack of social contact these days.
I think the produce thing is not as big of a factor as people seem to think, except for certain things which of necessary I can pick up at the farmers market (SF has one every day).
I don't eat animal products so that might be influencing my thoughts around food longevity though.
I was measuring convenience in terms of time. It seems from my observation that a lot of people also don't cook for themselves as much as we do, so they might get more value out of the small trip.
It a lot easier to freeze meat than, e.g, fruits or green produce. Most of my small shopping trips during the week are to buy those: apples, bananas, strawberries, a head of lettuce, and so on.
> If you want fresh produce and meat and don't have the huge fridges that seem to exist in most American households
How far do you take this? If you don't have a refrigerator at all, or any way to prepare food at home, then it's more convenient to eat out three times a day.
>Sorry, but there is no world in which shopping at the grocer every day is more convenient than shopping once every 1.5 or even 2 weeks or so.
For you.
I keep seeing your replies throughout this chain and I can't help but notice that you seem to be astounded by differences in what ultimately amounts to personal preference. What might be convenient shopping for you may not be convenient shopping for others. Lifestyle, locale, general eating habits and personal taste, among other things, are significant contributing factors to these differences.
Yes, I am saying that if you cook frequently for yourself, it takes more time to shop every day.
Some people enjoy going on walks every day, some people order lots of take out, etc. All of those are acceptable. I am only largely disagreeing with the people who claim that somehow these two alternatives take a comparable amount of time (and the people suggesting that I must have no taste in vegetables or live in suburbia).
> Yes, I am saying that if you cook frequently for yourself, it takes more time to shop every day.
I don't think there is a single rule. I depends entirely which day/hour you do the shopping and where. When I lived in Switzerland supermarkets were closed from saturday at 5pm during the weekend. Which means doing your shopping on friday night or saturday would take a lot of time as a lot of people were doing the same. Doing it any other day of the week was much quieter.
I don't necessarily shop every day, but I do it several times a week. Also I don't buy my vegetables at the supermarket but at the fruteria (spanish place where you only buy fruits and vegetables). I mostly avoid premade dishes, I even do my own pizzas and tart doughs as well as bread sometimes. That means I am cooking every day. Problem with shopping once a week is I would have to decide for 7 breakfasts, 7 meals and at least 6 dinners. That is a lot of planning and live very little room for improvisation unless you are wiling to waste things or have a giant refrigerator which I have no room for in my european kitchen.
And yes I enjoy going out for a walk/ride every day after work so it is not annoying at all.
There is a lot of parameters to take into account, home space, schedules, shop opening hours, proximity, if tap water is drinkable and taste good...YMMV.
> Problem with shopping once a week is I would have to decide for 7 breakfasts, 7 meals and at least 6 dinners. That is a lot of planning and live very little room for improvisation unless you are wiling to waste things or have a giant refrigerator which I have no room for in my european kitchen.
I think that is an overestimate because you can have leftovers and also breakfast is generally pretty easy, but I agree that there is greater planning overhead.
My partner and I compile a list of all the meals we want to make for the next two weeks before shopping, if you get in the habit it doesn't take too too long.
Well anyway I couldn't do that whithout relocating.
1. my fridge wouldn't be big enough
2. I have chosen to live carless because I don't have my own parking space and it is very difficult to find a parking space at any given time of the day close to my place.
3. I can only carry 2 european sized grocery shooping bags and a small backpack with my motorbike (a maxi scooter as they call it) when I go there with my gf. I can carry more in a hiking backpack if I go alone and I could theorically buy a bigger top case, similar to the big cube the pizza delivery riders are using but that would still be less than a fully loaded shopping cart.
>Yes, I am saying that if you cook frequently for yourself, it takes more time to shop every day.
And I am saying that someone may still find it more "convenient" to do so in spite of whatever additional time may or may not be involved. Convenience is far too nuanced and dependent upon personal preference for you to be stating, as an absolute, that it is not more convenient for someone to shop every day than it is once every week or two.
And I say this as someone who shops on a more weekly or bi-weekly basis.
There's a huge world you are not aware of then: I used to stop at a small grocer downtown every day on my bike commute home. That's absolutely a lot less time and much less hassle than getting the car out, driving to some huge shop with lots of parking, finding parking, filling gas, and then making several trips from car to home. And, obviously, if you want fresh bread/produce/etc. that requires more frequent shopping.
I can't imagine only shopping every 1.5 or 2 weeks or so. What kind of produce or meat even stays fresh that long?!
I usually decide what I want to cook on the evening when I go grocery shopping. Weekends kind of suck because I have to plan two days ahead. (and have to carry two days worth of food)
Exactly. I'd have to make a giant stroad-y detour to/from the office to go to the grocery store. Even if gas wasn't $5 / gallon, the time sink isn't worth it
Personally I'd upgrade that to shopping 'offline' at all.
As a result when I do go to a supermarket myself for something it's not enough to warrant more than a basket, but man is it a nightmare having to actually 'search' for stuff instead of just typing it into a box!
I have personally found that as someone who eats a lot of vegetables that online shopping is not tenable for produce selection, your mileage might vary.
sometimes I do something really ridiculous which is get a pickup order for my non-produce items and then go into the store just to buy the produce.
I do too, it's fine in my experience. Occasionally I get something that I think 'surely there was a longer-dated or better-knick one, this isn't the one I'd have picked myself', but in such cases they just refund it.
that depends on size of basket nad things you buy, 2-3 bags of chips easily fill smaller baskets and I dont think you could survive on that long, let alone family, same with milk boxes for instance
chips are one of the least space-efficient foods you could possibly pick. they're not particularly good for you either. I definitely would not recommend feeding your family chips for a whole week, whether or not they fit in the basket.
this is actually something I like about shopping into a basket. it forces me to be more intentional about my food choices. instead of a ton of snacks, I buy simple ingredients that can be combined into lots of different meals. it also prevents me from overflowing the pantry of my small apartment.
I typically allocate two thirds of my basket staples (milk, eggs, pasta, canned tomatoes, canned beans, rice) and top off the remaining third with whatever fruits/vegetables look good and possibly some chicken thighs or a nice steak. this is enough to feed myself for two weeks, though I could go as much as three if I go heavier on the staples.
obviously how you choose to shop is up to you. but you can fit a lot of healthy ingredients into a single basket if you're strategic about it.
Like other people have said, I shop on a daily basis, there’s a store close to us which is open every day and the price difference compared to other, bigger stores which are located just outside the city is not that big. It’s me, my SO, our dog and our cat, it’s pretty doable, fresh produce and fresh fruits every day (especially now, as the summer comes) is pure heaven.
We’re not big meat nor processed food consumers, and ordering take-out food is oftentimes comparable (if you add in the opportunity cost of the time and energy spent cooking).
Do you live in SF? If so, I'm curious what neighborhood.
> ordering take-out food is oftentimes comparable
I find people who do the daily shopping thing tend to order more take out than people who do the bulk shopping thing. it might have to do with them skewing younger though
Think Gus’s family of markets in SF. And independent markets like Golden on Church St between Duboce and Market. Other Avenues in the Sunset. And countless ethnic markets across the city. All these will be quicker to get in and out of than a Safeway or a Whole Foods.
I’m so confused by your comments. How are you carrying your groceries home? Full-sized shopping cart implies car. Car in SF, on the median, means calling an Uber, renting a Zipcar, moving another car in a tandem garage, operating a stacker, or finding a new street parking space when you come home - this shit takes time. Plus, parking at the store is often its own sport.
Versus just popping into the green grocer on your way back from whatever other walking or bicycling errand in the second most dense city in the US..
Also, what do your taste buds and nutritionist say about the value of produce freshness?
I use a car now, but it is part of my once a week commute that I go to the grocer.
I think street parking difficulty really depends on the neighborhood, in general SF is no Manhattan. I also grew up in the city and based on my observation seem to find parking considerably faster than my peers, so YMMV.
When I lived near Dolores park, if it wasn't the weekend parking was really easy. In Divorce triangle, parking is a little harder but still not that bad.
What? Around Potrero Hill, Gus’s is a third of the size of Safeway and half the size of Whole Foods, and that might still be generous. If you know what you are looking for a Gus’s trip takes less time on the merit of taking less walking the aisles due to store size alone.
Half way around the world, actually :) In Bucharest, Romania.
Where we live now the super-market is oftentimes closer to our building’s entrance compared to where I park our car (the supermarket is obviously always in the same place, but the parking location is variable from day to day, depending on luck). Even at the place where we staid before this, the tram station was just across the street, so it was doable to get out of work, pass by the supermarket, get in the tram, home.
As I now work from home (since even before the pandemic) I value the shopping and the interaction with the supermarket’s cashiers for itself, not quite like in a Shop Around the Corner way but, nevertheless, it kind of builds some “community”-like vibe.
I also do the shopping for our two pets by walking to the pet-shop myself, it’s a 15-20 minute walk each way I’d say. It would be a little cheaper to buy their food online, in bulk, and would “save” that time that I spend walking to and back from the shop, but, like mentioned above, buying food for our pets while talking with the pet-food cashier about what new pet treats they have brought in or some other stuff like that is an experience that I value for itself.
I want to second that I have the impression the parent is speaking from a strictly american perspective. I'm an American that emigrated to eastern europe, and even before I emigrated, I had already started to get _used_ to the way a lot of Europe has it.
I lived in Russia and Armenia and Czech Republic for quite a few years now, and the difference in how the cities are laid out is quite apparent; having a small but well stocked market every couple hundred meters really makes planning _far_ easier, and frequent trips are not a problem. Before COVID hit, it used to be that I'd just stop at the market on the first floor of my building and grab the few perishable essentials I needed (meat, some vegetables) and had plenty to cook for myself and for friends/neighbors that would visit.
This simply isn't the case in the US, even in the most modern cities. The corner markets/bodegas/whatever don't come close to what the common market in Europe has; you can get pretty alright quality _whatever_ at these markets, and leave the more exotic stuff (mostly asian ingredients/items or non-common spices) for when you go to a super market.
That isn't to say that no one ever does the traditional hypermarket run outside of the US; seeing babushkas and their hand carts packed with a week's worth of food and drinks trudging down the lane is a normal sight, but just as frequently they're stopping by the meat market near their commie block or by the small shops at the base of their building to get a few quick essentials.
It's honestly far more convenient; and at least prior to Ukraine situation, the home delivery options in Russia were fantastic, albeit a bit abusive of the work force when it came to wages.
I'm a 15 minute walk from the pet store, but I'd have to go a half mile out of my way to get there by sidewalk. Otherwise I'd have to hike up and down a steep, weedy hill. Either way, I have to get across a 4 busy lanes of traffic traveling at 45 mph. I'd kill for an overpass. Even then, I'm buying a 30 lb bag of dog food, because the savings vs multiple smaller bags is huge. It's doable, but I couldn't pick up much of anything else on that trip.
I wonder if I could train one of these mutts to pull a cart.
There are 4 grocery stores in easy walking distance to me, and a few more within a 10 min drive. There are also over a dozen specialty markets in that same radius. And a weekly farmers market about a 10 min walk away.
I go food shopping ~3 times a week and just pick up what we need for the next couple of days.
There are so many grocery delivery or pick-up options these days (depends on where you live), I find it surprising people don't prefer those. For most people, I would expect that shopping is somewhat of a boring and tiresome chore.
Big box stores are different. I guess the prices on Amazon are now significantly higher and delivery is taking longer these days, to make the trip to a trip to a Walmart or Target. Still I don't understand how some people's eyes light up as they push around shopping carts.
It just shows me how much I don't understand other people's lives. And a reason to be even more polite when interacting with strangers.
To offer a different perspective. I personally dislike both grocery delivery and pick-up options.
Pick-up doesn't tend to list every option available. Pick-up also doesn't let you see the fruit or vegetables that are going into your cart until you've already paid. (I spend A LOT of money on fruit which approaches 50% of my diet on some days).
Delivery there is a fee and I by principal don't try to use services that incur a fee when I can perform the task myself. This is also why I don't use delivery for pizza.
I frankly don't trust strangers doing the pick-up. I've had to use this service a couple of times during self-isolation during the height of the pandemic and there was always something out-of-stock, which seemed implausible, as I never had an issue with my groceries being out of stock.
I don't see how shopping is boring or tiresome, it can definitely be agitating to have to deal with the entire spectrum of your local populous in a cramped labyrinth but you are walking, searching, and making decisions. It is definitely a chore though.
I'm visiting the grocery store at least once per day on average but I also live a mile away. With work-from-home/work-remote it helps to feed the social need in me, even if I'm not chatting with strangers, I'm seeing them.
> I frankly don't trust strangers doing the pick-up. I've had to use this service a couple of times during self-isolation during the height of the pandemic and there was always something out-of-stock, which seemed implausible, as I never had an issue with my groceries being out of stock.
This is the big one for me. All current grocery delivery options in my area rely on gig workers, which is essentially having any random person on the street touch your food.
I used to use Peapod, which had actual employees, so there's a bit of extra responsibility and in theory safety/reliability. Not really much worse than, say, a restaurant. Unfortunately they completely left the Midwest in Feb 2020 (great timing eh?).
>always something out-of-stock, which seemed implausible
Maybe these services use dark stores, where they aren't running around your local supermarket picking up items but have a private warehouse in the city. So lots of things are out of stock.
I have 6 medium-sized shops, 2 shops selling only vegetables, 6 small shops selling basics and ready-to-eat meals in 10 minut walk radius. This is a lot, but in other parts of town you will probably have at least one medium and one small shop open between 6-22. It's in city, but most villages in here often have similar situations. So I would say it depends on country.
Not using a cart allows you to gauge the weight of everthing and it is especially useful if you walk or cycle to the supermarket. Now I am working from home so I just go several times a week, I definitely don't mind doing that as the first thing I want to do when I stop working is having a walk or a bicycle ride outside. Before I used to do that when commuting back home.
Think most of the world shops without carts. They just go more frequently and probably live in a situation that makes that easier. (public transportation where there's a grocery store at most every stations ... Japan or nearby ... most of Europe)
Me too. It's been frustrating since the pandemic started and all the grocery stores near me used that as an excuse to remove them. The high end one has them back but not the others.
Some stores like Target and CVS have wheelie baskets now. They look like this[1] or this[2] and you can use them either handheld or roll-along but I’ll admit they’re a bit cumbersome to carry. For me, at least. Maybe they’re the perfect size for bigger/taller people.
Several years ago stores in my area deployed the wheeled baskets but I seldom saw people use them. They have almost completely disappeared and been replaced with double tiered small basket shopping carts. If available this is my preferred cart of choice. I shop for 1 1/2 people so these small carts are able to hold a week's worth of my groceries.
And how exactly shopping cart force you to buy more stuff? Do US shopping carts have some built in device giving electroshocks unless they are filled to certain capacity?
I decide whether I take cart or basket depending on my shopping list, obviously if I am going to buy heavy things I am not going to carry it around shop in basket or if it's one of those shops with very small area behind checkout it's better to put stuff back to cart.
Best compromise is bigger basket on wheels (which can be pulled) for medium purchases, no need to bother with coin, no need to carry heavier stuff in hand and no need to return it back to inconvenient location plus in theory it gives you time to organize your grocery later after checkout.
Btw I don't have car, so I carry everything in backpack, either big (50-60L) or medium one (~30L) and eventually lighter things (bread/cakes/chips etc) in big plastic bag, cart vs basket have again nothing to do with this.
By your logic you should take with you only limited amount of cash, if you have such bad self control that you need to limit yourself with basket size and honestly I think you should seek some psychological help if your self control is that bad.
I think your comment is over the top and unnecessarily rude. No, parent commenter doesn’t need “psychological help” because they prefer to use a basket over a cart in order to buy fewer items. But, in case you’re actually curious about why someone would say such a thing: https://www.fastcompany.com/3057306/how-the-shopping-cart-sh...
It’s also addressed pretty early on in the posted article.
If you go to Costco, you see almost everyone using a cart checks out with a full cart - if they reduced the size of their carts they’d likely reduce the average purchase amount, which indicates the size of the cart helps their sales. Still got room? Might as well buy it!
People generally go to Costco about twice a month. Costco is a bulk goods store, and you pay for the ability to shop there. It'd be sort of stupid and wasteful to go to Costco to pick up one item unless you're just really into rotisserie chickens.
Quite capable of bringing home a week’s worth of groceries in one go.
If you live within walking distance of a store and don’t like shopping daily, buying your own cart (of a different style/color than the store’s) can be a great deal.
I find the wheeled basket that you move like a carry-on the best option; small so you don't buy a lot of stuff, nimble (can get around shopping carts) but don't have to strain your arm and hand after you put a gallon of milk.
Today's resistance to self checkout reminds me of the resistance to these shopping carts and before that the resistance to supermarkets ("why do I have to go fetch my purchases myself?" "I miss the conversation with the shopkeeper" were common examples of complaints that have reappeared in the anti-self-checkout complaints).
My grandmother used to laugh about a famous person-on-the-street interview about Australia going metric: one woman complained, "why can't they just wait until all us old people die". It was her go-to comment about anyone complaining about change, and she found it funnier the older she got.
To be fair in this case, self-service is objectively worse than having the shopkeeper grab everything you want. The popularity of curb-side pickup of your grocery order shows how nice that model used to be, but self-service is more scalable and cheaper. The same is true when it comes to paying. It’s nicer to have someone else ring you up than you have to learn to do it yourself.
I think a better comparison would be people complaining about frictionless checkout (where you just walk out like Amazon grocery stores) in the same way as shopping carts, which is actually a whole new and better experience but can feel so weird that people feel uncomfortable about it.
(disclaimer: I’ve never actually tried an Amazon Go store but I do avoid self-checkout whenever I have fruits/veggies to check out)
> self-service is objectively worse than having the shopkeeper grab everything you want.
This makes some assumptions.
Off the top of my head:
1) The shopkeeper is always available to grab your purchases without a wait.
2) You already know exactly which products you want, and/or there aren't different versions of products to select between.
3) The shopkeeper is trustworthy enough to get you the actual products you want.
4) You aren't a person that the shopkeeper is going to discriminate against.
There are lots of good reasons to want to pick out your own groceries.
Whenever I go get my own groceries, I can buy my lunches in advance for the next week as well if the expiration dates for my usual lunches are long enough. But whenever I've ordered my groceries delivered, I've had to assume that the expiration dates last for about a week.
There's definitely advantages to someone picking out your groceries for you, but also some drawbacks.
> To be fair in this case, self-service is objectively worse than having the shopkeeper grab everything you want.
even this depends on the type of shopper you are. if I'm buying a bunch of pasta, curbside pickup is great, and delivery is even better. but if I'm buying an ny strip, I want to see all the choices and pick the one that looks best. similar for fruits and vegetables, I don't trust the professional shopper to evaluate ripeness on my behalf. some things you just have to do yourself.
And the common response to self checkout is that you are putting a checker out of work. Never mind the fact that most of the shelves are not stocked by store employees, but by distributors. A grocery store is basically a place where the store rents out shelf space to the highest bidder.
> Never mind the fact that most of the shelves are not stocked by store employees, but by distributors.
This is new to me. Do you just mean that the placement is decided by distributors? I'm pretty sure I have seen store employees putting stuff on the shelves from time to time at my local supermarket.
I believe this only applies to a few sections—soda, chips, and magazines(?). Your produce and canned food aisles are stocked by the store employees, though the planograms for the shelving layout comes from corporate, sized for the store’s footprint. There may be some distributor input into those, such as cereal, but I’ve never seen those processes, only the resulting stock plan.
Distributors for the big food companies (Coca-Cola, Pepsi/Frito-Lay, etc) essentially rent and maintain a section of shelving and then keep it full and decide themselves on the distribution of products that appear. Smaller manufacturers sell their product wholesale to the stores who then stock them in the normal fashion.
The end caps of isles are sold to the highest bidder, typically by the week; if that bidder is coca-cola they manage that display as well, subject to the constraints of the store.
One of the innovations of Frys Electronics was to try to run their shops that way, as they started by selling serial cables and other computer supplies in their family's grocery chain. It only partially worked as the vendors weren't really equipped to do this, the way the food companies are.
My response to self-checkout is that it only works properly 50% of the time, and the other half I have to stand around looking befuddled before an employee waddles over to clear the error. Cashiers are evidently better at checkout than I am, and their labor is free-to-me, so self-checkout just seems like a raw deal with no upsides.
I don't see why it has to be one way or the other. aside from whole foods JWO (which is great!), I have yet to see a single grocery store that lacks checkout lanes. if you like that service, you're in luck! it's available pretty much everywhere. but let's have self-checkout as an option too. nine times out of ten, I'll be walking out the door with my groceries while you're still waiting in line.
I think you might just have a shitty grocery store... 50% is an absurd failure rate. I think the failure rate I've seen is closer to 1%, and I'm a pretty heavy self checkout user across pharmacies and grocery stores, in both sf and ny
well, if I am saving supermarket money on shopkeepers then supermarket also needs to expect I will also try to save some money on "mistakes" while using self checkout, two can play this game, especially considering how much money shopkeepers scammed me, because they always make "mistake" which is beneficial only to shop (OK, to be fair, not always, "only" in 95-98% cases, I can't even remember how many times they scammed me with wrong price(tag)s or wrong item (it's almost every other or every third purchase, so I check receipt every single time), but I remember very well once in a many years guy made mistake and charged me cheaper bread, that was like winning the lotto)
When Target was just starting to expand as Super Target in my area they somehow had the barcode for turkey ringing up as 25 cents total instead of per pound. I tried to explain to the cashier that it had to be wrong and they started to get mad at me, so I gave up and took my 25 cent turkey.
I like talking to people in the checkout line. The lady who checked me out today grew up in the same tiny town my parents retired to, 7 hours from here. Just learned that today. Plus, the UX of self checkout systems generally sucks to the extent that it makes me angry when I use it, and I'd rather feel better at the end of a transaction than worse.
People like you are my worst nightmare :P. The last thing I want when shopping is interactions with random strangers. I'll even gladly take a slightly janky self-checkout experience if it eliminates interacting with a cashier.
Self-checkout machines are simply bad though. All the hoops they make you jump through to prevent theft makes for a terrible experience. Having to put everything on the damn scale, even if it's the only thing you're buying, sucks, and even still it always yells at you, "UNEXPECTED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA!". And there's always a dozen prompts you have to click through before you can pay.
Home Depot gets it right. They have a large table with a handheld wireless scanner, a receipt printer, a card payment terminal, and a touch screen that you don't need to interact with at all. All you have to do is start scanning and tap your card when you're done.
Do you really find that to be a hurdle? The first time I used one, the scale warning surprised me. But it's trivial to avoid, and now self checkout feels super efficient to me
I'm tall, and the scales are nearly at floor level. And if I walk into a grocery store and buy a single bag of milk (which doesn't need another bag because it is a bag so why would I put it in the bagging area?), having to stoop down to put it on the scale is an inconvenience I'd rather avoid. Some stores let you select "no bag" every time and let you proceed to payment, but most don't. Being treated with so much suspicion is also not pleasant.
My solution is to avoid self-checkout at stores with crappy machines, or avoid those stores altogether. If Home Depot can do good self-checkout, why can't everyone else? That's the primary reason I frequent HD over Lowe's.
It can be a hurdle for people who aren't already familiar with the machines and their arcane rules. That quickly becomes a problem if the store doesn't have enough staff to dedicate an employee to the self-checkout area.
I've been seeing this more often in the past few months at understaffed low-cost retailers. When there's nobody around to override the machines, people get frustrated and move on to the next open machine without understanding what went wrong.
Five minutes later, the entire self-checkout area is offline, and the would-be customer sometimes feels sufficiently annoyed and neglected to walk off with their groceries.
> It can be a hurdle for people who aren't already familiar with the machines and their arcane rules.
Right, like I mentioned, it was a very weird first time experience. But my question was addressed to the parent commenter, who is clearly not a first-time user and is aware of how these systems work.
I was asking how it remains a hurdle to someone who's already familiar with it, because this is very far from my own experience. I honestly don't even notice the scale requirement anymore, because placing things on the scale has become subconscious
What is Wal-Mart Pay? In Canada Wal-Mart's self-checkouts are as bad as the rest. Actually, worse, because they force you to walk through this longaze before you can even get to the machines.
You scan a QR code to pay with your saved card. You can also use "Scan & Go" and scan all your items with your phone before you get to the checkout. The self checkouts here work great, no annoying weight sensor or anything and there's a detachable scanner.
Many of the 'self-checkout' machines are really bad at what they do. Put the items on a scale as you scan them, but don't put your own bag on the scale ... so you can bag the item after it's scanned, saving repeating that motion for each item ... or it will bitch at you. Repeatedly. (And the 'watchperson' comes over sounding accusatory.)
The store can damn well afford to pay someone to scan and bag the items, while I do the loyalty-card, payment-card cha-cha. The store isn't paying me to do all this shit.
These days many supermarkets here have self-scan systems where you scan each item yourself with a handheld machine before putting it in your cart or bag, and at checkout you just put the scanner back, scan your store card and pay. Once in a while, a worker has to scan random items from your cart (I assume it's based on heuristics that try to determine whether you might have had a possibly suspicious behavior like cancelling items from the scanner often) but that's quite rare.
It's fast, there are no lines, it's less work for everyone.
The strange thing about self checkout at my nearest store is that the store is 24 hours, but they close self checkout at night, which is also when they have no staff, so the only way to use the store is to walk all over and drag the manager back to open a checkout.
I still hate shopping carts. But they have nothing on the new inventory picker racks that employees are required to push around the store all day.
Perhaps its just my region exploding in population, but if I don't go to the grocery store at ridiculous hours (i.e. 6am on the dot this morning), it takes me upwards of 30 minutes to navigate this new chaotic mess.
It's interesting that shopping carts that you have to insert a coin into still seem to be uncommon in the US. They were the obvious way to incentivise people to bring the carts back in Germany.
(And not necessarily the same people who shopped with them. People who find an abandoned shopping cart in the parking lot would often bring it back to the store to get at the coin.)
And even Aldi here has to station a guy to give you a cart and collect those in the parking lot, mainly because people often don’t have the quarter to get one.
It’s a cute idea but I’m not sure it’s practical in the long run.
I wonder if this is regional or specific to your location. I've been to several (and have frequently shopped at two) and they've never had a person staffing the carts.
It has been practical for a long time, but you may be right in that they'll have a hard time with the younger generations that transition to being cashless.
Relying on the honor system may be less effective, but I prefer it anyway because it feels a whole lot less demeaning. No quarter is essentially the store saying 'We trust you to do the right thing' whereas the quarter says 'betcha we can make you behave with a quarter'
Also, stray shopping carts left in the lot really doesn't seem like a big problem worth solving to me. The lots all have cart returns scattered throughout them, so you're never very far from one, and the vast majority of people use them.
All three of the grocery stores I shop at are in the city. All three of them have honor system cart returns, and I've never seen a stray cart in my neighborhood. Even the homeless seem to leave the carts alone, or at least stash them where they won't be seen.
During the pandemic many stores in Germany left all the carts unlocked and it seems that some of them didn't go back to the old system. So probably they've realized it's a silly thing to do and maybe it actually bring more customers if you left the carts unlocked. I actually used to chose stores that don't require a coin to unlock the carts.
Exactly this. Also, for example, no security cameras at Trader Joe's and no scales in the self checkout at Whole Foods. I'm a grownup, you don't need forcing functions to make me behave like one.
I prefer the pragmatic approach of assuming (not without evidence) that people won't behave without incentive. I'm much more annoyed by carts all over the parking lot than I am by temporarily putting a coin in a slot. And I like the happy side effect of not seeing miserable teenagers in vests tasked with collecting rogue carts on cold nights.
Why does the teenager have that job, and would the teenager be happier without a job?
Besides teenagers, grocery stores often hire mentally impaired people for bagging and cart wrangling. They seem to enjoy the work more than the teenagers.
No worries, comparatively little of their time is spent cart wrangling and if that responsibility did not exist it more than likely would not impact their employment status in any meaningful way.
> Why does the teenager have that job, and would the teenager be happier without a job?
Isn't the point here that the teenager has that job because there are no coin slots in carts, so there has to be someone collecting the carts?
I don't know if the teenager would be happier without a job, but that is a bit of a leading question - it's not like fetching carts is the only job that exists. Maybe they would prefer to work a different job that doesn't involve cart wrangling, and involves spending more time doing something useful.
In some sense you are right. But it's extremely common for people to behave as if they believed in 'out of sight, out of mind'.
That's a big part of the reason to we don't let poor migrants into the country (almost whichever rich country you live in), and work menial jobs without a social safety net. 'Who wants to look at poor, miserable people?' Better to leave them to rot in other countries where we don't have to look at them..
Note that in just about any store here that uses coin operated carts you can go to the service desk and ask for a coin for the cart and get it. It's really not about the money, though I see how it can feel like it is.
I figure the coin is really just mostly there as a signifier that it's your job to return the cart and not some store employees job.
It works at Aldi in the US. The incentive is not so much that I can’t afford throwing away 25 cents, but it’s that, the next time I shop at Aldi, I need a quarter to get a cart.
How many people even have coins in their car anymore, much less in their pocket? I have a small supply of coins in my car just in case but I imagine a lot of people haven't touched a coin or bill in years.
Yes. And their widespread adoption in Germany can't have been before 2009 (when I left the country, and didn't really see them.) So by now it's a bit more than a decade at most.
We have an Oma in our apartment who brings a cart back periodically, keeps it at the bike rack, and walks it back to the store the next day she goes shopping.
I saw plenty of supermarkets with carts asking for coin having their cart stolen and abandoned across town. I think it's mainly linked with whether you have juvenile "gangs" fooling around or not
And Germans by and large put the coins back. They just use a Euro coin to help with that social institution. Most people could totally afford to lose a Euro, but it's The Right Thing to do to bring the cart back.
Similar to how when you are working as a programmer, it's good for not to break 'master'. You could rely completely on an honour system, or you could have an automated merge-check. In most places, the merge-check can be arbitrarily easy to bypass, but programmers would still by and large abide it.
I hate them to this day. They often are not easy to drive, their wheels tend to block, and navigating a supermarket full of people pushing those carts is a nightmare. I switched to doing grocery shopping online because of that.
They’re built with two large child seats side by side - the only thing I’ve ever seen come close to competing is the large lumber carts at Menards or similar.
The first time I walked into BJs as an adult, I was hit with a huge wave of dysphoria. The size of the place, the quantity of stuff and just the commercialism was overwhelming in a very visceral way.
I was really surprised to have such strong negative feelings since I have plenty of good memories of shopping there as a kid. It was always a fun place to go since there were usually lots of free food samples.
I usually just park a cart in one place in the supermarket and then carry things to it. If a supermarket is big, then just park the cart consecutively on several places.
I can never leave carts unattended, because the store employees think it’s abandoned and whisk it away to the restock area. It’s happened multiple times to me.
The shopping carts in Europe tend to have all four wheels able to swivel 360°, which makes them vastly easier to maneuver. (We call them "Euro-carts" when we're able to find a place that has them here in the US.)
My understanding is that grocery stores deliberately chose to use inferior carts in order to make them less attractive to steal, or something like that. I would really like to see them re-evaluate that decision.
I find those "Euro-carts" much more difficult to maneuver. In my experience it is difficult to to turn them without any fixed pivot point. They seem to just want to keep going in whatever direction they are going. Maybe I am just an idiot. Is there some sort of trick to controlling them?
For me, the trick is to guide like a mouse, not steer like a car.
The only place around me that has 4x360° wheels is IKEA (i.e. occasional-not-frequent destination), but I prefer them generally to the standard-issue sort.
I don't like them either, but hardware stores and Colruyt (a Belgian supermarket) have four pivoting wheels but also a fixed wheel in the center under the cart, which allows it to turn much more easily. Those are great.
It really depends a lot on the upkeep. If stores do no upkeep then in no time you end up with carts that all have one wheel clogged with hair and pulling the cart steeply to one side. With regular maintenance you have smooth running carts that don't have any directional bias and are a pleasure to use.
A supermarket local to me had stickers for a while you could grab as a customer and stick on a cart if it had a stuck wheel. They'd then take that cart out for repair. They don't do the stickers anymore, but I figure they just keep on top of keeping the wheels running smoothly nowadays. Haven't had a cart pull to one side in years now.
Never liked carts either. I can fit everything I need in a basket or in my hands. I don’t know why but it gives me very unpleasant feelings thinking about spending an hour at a grocery store with a completely filled cart.
Here in Germany, Lidl and Aldi don't even have baskets anymore. At my local Lidl the security guard won't let you in unless you have a cart, which you need a 1 euro coin to get...
I wonder if there is actually evidence that people buy more with a cart vs hand held basket, overall. Obviously they likely do for that trip. It seems to me that if I only use a hand held basket, I'm making more trips to the store for my family of 4. Probably daily if not every other day. If I use a cart and purchase a lot, I go to the store less. But, did I actually purchase more or less food in a months duration? I'd bet it's about the same. It's not like I'm literally eating more depending on the method of procurement. I eat about the same, every day. But I would be spending more time standing in lines and wasting more gas by using a basket unless the market was within walking distance and I chose to walk over drive. Personally I don't really like going to shop for anything and buy as much as I can, whether it's food or clothes or anything else.
It seems proximity to the store and the number of people you're routinely buying food for would be the bigger predictors of who would use a cart over a basket, as well as lifestyle. I mean, some people choose to drive even if they live next door to the market.
If your hand cart gets full of groceries, you might not pick up other stuff on that trip, like light bulbs, ballpoint pens, a potted plant, or a toy for your kid.
After you've left the grocery store, you still need those things. So you go to the hardware store, office supply store, nursery, or toy store because that's where you prefer to buy that stuff if you're making a separate trip anyway.
Grocery stores get those purchases because of convenience. Take away the convenience and they might lose the purchases.
I walk to the grocery store and used to use a basket, carrying food home. Non-food was delivered by Amazon.
Then near the end of 2020 when so many trips per week was getting to be too much a hassle, I bought a personal cart that I bring to the store with me. Now Amazon is more of a hassle for plenty of non-food items, because it's so trivial to add it to the cart, so I've been getting less online and more from the store.
It seems more natural that people would buy more stuff since now they can carry more stuff. It's impractical to carry as many normal shopping carts items, due to their weight, in a hand basket. One needs only a trip to Costco (wholesale bulk purchase store in the US) to see the average shopping cart
I feel like people wouldn't buy as much liquids (soda etc.) without a shopping cart. Tea, coffee, cocoa powder are all small and light in comparison, and milk was delivered.
> If I use a cart and purchase a lot, I go to the store less.
Even that is already a win for the store — you're spending the same amount money in total, while spending less of cashier's time and other store's resources.
I generally shop once a week using a cart, and then only do small trips in between using a basket if I forgot something. I would definitely buy MORE if I only did daily shopping with a basket, because I would be exposed to the risk of impulse buying 5-7 times as much, simply because I would be walking the aisles more often.
If I run out of something mid-week I will go to a convenience store. It was always a bit awkward to approach the counter with my arms full. Now a local Lansing chain has added plastic baskets at the door. That single thing has made me chose that chain over its rivals.
I usually zig-zag across the whole store, and if I have a basket, i usually don't buy any sodas, because they're heavy, I say "i'll pick them up at the end of the zig-zagging", and then don't because I'm already at the cash register, and they're "far away".
With the cart, I just put them in when I pass by them.
I purposely don't pick up a basket, let alone a cart, when shopping but bring my own bag or better yet, go without out if I'm just getting something quick. It's very easy to come out every time with food you don't need but the supermarket has placed so perfectly to tempt you. Yes I get strange looks laden with bread and bananas and whathaveyou cradled in my arms but it's a proven money saver when I can't easily pick up that delicious box of somethings as well as keep the necessities.
The only time I personally hate the shopping cart experience is when there are no areas to deposit them in the parking lot. Brookshires is a store that has no cart-deposit locations in the lot, because they still believe that the best way to handle customers is to have their employees load up your car personally. The problem is that the throughput of people at checkout is faster than the car loaders, and so you have an imbalance that either requires people to drag their carts all the way back to the place they got them OR to just leave them in the parking lot. Most people are going to choose option B.
I still avoid them. They feel gluttonous to me and I prefer to shop with a basket. I also like the slightly larger baskets on wheels. Filling a cart is just about guaranteed to create some food waste in our household.
Also, if I walk or bike to the store, a basket conveniently alerts me when I have picked up too much food to carry home comfortably.
This comment section is another reason why Hacker News is not like real life :) Shopping carts are wildly popular where I live.
I wonder if shopping carts became popular alongside the rise of the car, thus you were more likely to get a “cars worth of groceries.” Another innovation in the early 20th century was the rise of bare-bones, almost-at-cost grocers outside of town that you had to drive to which during the Great Depression was were people were starting to go more often, instead of the local market.
Not a fan of shopping carts in general. But what I really can't stand is when I go to a store and they have more large carts than could ever possibly fit in the store at once, yet very few of the small carts, and usually no baskets. I imagine this is to entice you to use a large cart -> buy more shit.
The main reason I "[hate] shopping carts" is that the wheels seem to invariably be defective. I remember reading in the late 90s / early 2000s (the era of 'Walmart is taking over' articles) that this was deliberate. Carts with misaligned wheels that don't run straight force customers to slow down and spend more time moving from aisle to aisle. No idea if actually true, though.
> it's a better gauge of what I can carry in my 2 tote bags
Why not use the tote bags directly instead of the basket? This way it calibrates for size but also weight & resistance. This also gets you into a habit of having your bag deployed before you start shopping so less chance to forget it and have to buy another one.
I shop with a single bag sized for my ride back, even the baskets are way too large.
Face masks are no longer necessary where I live but the grocery stores still have the hand sanitizer gel at the entrance that most people use. I hope this stays up.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 293 ms ] thread“We don’t like the new logo”
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“What I currently do is good enough for me”
Personally, I now save myself a lot of time by not trying to explain to people why they are wrong.
Some examples: Apple's touchbar ESC key or the super low profile non-replacable keyboard, vehicles that switches to touch screen and capacitive button interfaces for critical controls resulting in less safe driving experience, Apple's iPhone "your holding it wrong" decorative metal frame, Apple's refusal to add NFC or wireless charging for years because of the metal back, there are hundreds more.
Not sure what you could do in one and not the other, but you sure had a lot of cranky greybeards when their shops had to switch, because they had to learn new ways of thinking.
You’d also run into the same situation if you had a young whipper-snapper go into a QuarkXpress shop.
The number of times I accidentally closed an almost-filled-out modal because a few molecules of my finger accidentally brushed the escape key on that @#$&* thing...
I dislike shopping carts simply because they look bad and I have no need for them, though I understand they’re useful or even neccessary for some.
BANG!
This is 100% it. Most people don't have the cognitive capacity to understand anything that differs meaningfully from the status quo. It's just not productive to pretend they do. It's no different from talking to a young child and insisting that they understand everything at the level adults do.
I seriously don't see how people who cook frequently for more than just 1 person get by without a cart without considerable inconvenience.
I did this for a few months right after work, which was in walking range. Eventually I went back to "shopping big" once every week after I moved and switched my employer, though. But it's doable.
e: I know that a lot of people do this (often because they don't own cars), but having lived in cities my whole life and done both approaches at various times, the infrequent large shipping trip is much faster when amortized over two weeks.
and for those saying all my produce is going to be spoiled or I must just be eating processed foods... absolutely not.
I have never lived in a suburb in my life, I am maybe 2 minutes walking from a small grocer and 5 from a larger. Still definitely save time (and money) by shopping big biweekly at the large grocer.
You are probably right about saving money by buying in bulk. Unfortunately then storage becomes a problem (we live in a small space).
I'm not five minutes from my own front door i.e. if I decide to go grocery shopping, the process of leaving my apartment takes at least five minutes.
Maybe in suburbia. In cities without insane rents and healthy work/life balances (IE: not NYC), there are often many grocery stores that make regular grocery shopping quite easy. (And rather fresh.)
Also regular grocery shopping means that people aren't loading up carts with 40+ items and in turn need 10 minutes to check out.
Grocery shopping becomes a non-item and promotes healthier inside cooking.
Working from home, there’s obviously no grocery store for me to pass by on my commute, so daily shopping would be 30 minutes a day (45 if I walked it) instead of 60 minutes once a week. That’s about the same as adding back my entire pre-COVID commute time. I’ll stick to weekly and spend the extra 2 hours per week doing something else.
Haven't been to a grocery store in over 2 years.
In suburbia it would be the most convenient, because suburbanites drive everywhere anyway. If your market is at the end of your block, it's still going to take you 15 minutes to get there and back in the best case.
People who shops just once a week can't value the freshness of what they eat at all. Or they just eat dry/frozen/industrial treated wares that don't spoil easily, but eating fresh really tastes a lot better.
Just disagree on vegetables, I am a massive veggie lover and the difference is not nearly as much as you are making it out to be. I don't each much processed food.
I also don't eat animal products, which might be influencing my opinion since I perceive those as fast to spoil.
Fruit, vegetables and bread will spoil in a few days.
Not in Europe. Maybe the reason it is crap in USA is because people don't shop daily and hence they don't buy good bread there? If you optimize bread to taste good after a week instead of tasting good after a day then I can see why American brands put so much sugar in their breads.
Sometimes I buy high quality bread from a small bakery. Tastes great and stays great. I find this applies to rye bread only. White bread doesn’t seem to work this way.
It does exist in Japan. You may think they’re healthy but they eat the worst wheat products imaginable. Even white bread isn’t white enough for them; they cut the crusts off their 711 sandwiches and have whiter than white meat buns.
Some are good, some are bad. Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece have usually pretty good bread in your typical supermarket. Northern countries tend to fare worse in my experience.
Heidelberg bread is pretty reliably decent quality, nearly always stays good for the amount of time it takes me to eat a full loaf, and is made with good ingredients.
To that 3x5 minutes of walking to and from the store, add 3x10 minutes for walking around the aisles picking food off the shelf, and another 3x5 minutes for checkout. That adds up to an hour a week. That's far short of "a few" hours.
Upthread you did respond to somebody saying daily, but the comment I responded to was itself a response to somebody saying "Hit up the store a couple of times a week, get what you need." To which you responded that it would take hours. I interpret "a couple of times a week" to mean every other day, or about 3 times a week.
Now if you walk there, all the stuff that you can buy is the stuff that you can carry. What I can carry is less than fits into a shopping cart, so I tend not to use a shopping cart, because I can feel on my shoulder what I am willing to carry home. If I'd take the car I'd have to find a parking lot when returning – and dependend on which one I find I might have to carry stuff anyways.
I guess european cities are very different to US cities in that regard.
Maybe you walk to the shops if they are close enough?
If not, that sounds wasteful.
Personally I try to spend as little time in the store as possible, so when I am in there I'll take extra of whatever keeps just so that I don't have to be in the store again any time soon. Better to spend an extra 5m grabbing everything for the next week than to come in again in two days time.
The bountiful produce production is mostly more noticeable in SoCal/central valley than in SF.
Other places on the east coast do have better groceries than NorCal and proximity to farms doesn’t seem to matter that much. Which makes sense; “eating local” and “farm to table” are not actually real things, wouldn’t be good for the environment if they were, and are mostly products of green meme boomers’ wishful thinking.
Until I moved out of Manhattan recently, the absolute best shopping experience was Gorillas, which had the "not available in the app if it's not available in real life" experience of Fresh, but also delivery in near real-time. I have started meals, found that I was missing an ingredient, and ordered it through Gorillas with no disruption to the meal prep time.
I don't think it's really doable unless you are single and you have big chain right on the way from work, otherwise small shops in convenient location next to your house will charge you premium compared to big discount chains
I live in a dense city and very close to grocery stores, this is still true.
Bonus: I don't have to take the car either.
but stated otherwise, you are saying that my getting a big order saves me 2 hours every time I do it. 10 minutes is also almost certainly an underestimate, assuming you live a 5 minute walk from the grocery store.
No, it takes less than a minute extra walk from my daily commute (walking), the rest of the nine minutes are to compensate for traversing the grocery store multiple times and wait in line at checkout.
If I expand it by another ~4 minutes I have other options as well.
If time was of extreme mindless essence I'd also take the bike.
Going daily to the grocery store costs lots of more time. The vast majority of people do not live a 1 minute walk from a grocery store, even in dense urban areas.
Doesn't apply to everyone of course (using a bike rather than walking dramatically helps though), but it does tie back to the US urban planning leaving a lot to be desired.
In the US, which was the point of my original comment. Here in Berlin I have at least 4 stores (Edeka, Lidl, Al Natura and a no-name Bio Markt ) in a 200m radius.
(edit: I am not one to complain about downvotes, but it is ridiculous to see this comment in gray, yet no one able to actually address the point. Bad urban planning and car-dependency in North America is intertwined with a lot of cultural aspects of the society, including this ridiculous notion that groceries are "inconvenient" and therefore better if done in bulk and/or less frequently)
These days you might face resistance to allowing light industrial again because people would accuse it of creating traffic and possibly leading people to park in front of their house - Nextdoor posters’ main principle is they should be able to park everywhere for free and nobody else should.
Do people really do that? The majority of what I get is the same across trips.
Also there's a thing we do that the daily shoppers sound unaware of: It's called a grocery list. A pad of paper left on the countertop that, at any time over those weeks, anyone in the house can add an item to if they want something different or know we're about to run out of. There's almost no planning involved.
That depends, it's recommended to walk a certain amount every day to stay healthy. If the trip to the grocery store is part of that, then you don't have to count it in the time spent.
Also, if you watch the video you will see that bi-weekly driving/parking for groceries eats more of your time budget than multiple small trips to a well-located shop.
most produce does not spoil anywhere near as fast as you are suggesting.
That's untrue. Produce, especially if bought fresh, keeps for longer than 2 days in the fridge.
Certain items keep longer than others - carrots (of which I am especially fond of snacking on) keep very well.
What doesn't last for two weeks in a fridge?
Maybe you refuse to, but you could. An organic head of lettuce easily lasts a week or more in the fridge. Anyway, the extent to which produce has been "designed" is greatly overstated. Two hundred years ago people used to store apples in barrels for weeks if not months.
I'm not in the US, I buy organic and local produce at a farmers market. They usually last two weeks in the fridge.
If they are lasting only three days for you, maybe you are buying produce that is already over a week old.
I was with you until this rather extreme statement.
It depends a lot on what "convenient" means. If you want fresh produce and meat and don't have the huge fridges that seem to exist in most American households, it's a lot more convenient to shop for fresh, newly arrived stuff at a small neighborhood grocer's every 2-3 days.
It's also a form of social contact, another thing which isn't really included in "convenience", but maybe should be; given how many people are talking about mental health problems caused by lack of social contact these days.
I don't eat animal products so that might be influencing my thoughts around food longevity though.
I was measuring convenience in terms of time. It seems from my observation that a lot of people also don't cook for themselves as much as we do, so they might get more value out of the small trip.
How far do you take this? If you don't have a refrigerator at all, or any way to prepare food at home, then it's more convenient to eat out three times a day.
For you.
I keep seeing your replies throughout this chain and I can't help but notice that you seem to be astounded by differences in what ultimately amounts to personal preference. What might be convenient shopping for you may not be convenient shopping for others. Lifestyle, locale, general eating habits and personal taste, among other things, are significant contributing factors to these differences.
Some people enjoy going on walks every day, some people order lots of take out, etc. All of those are acceptable. I am only largely disagreeing with the people who claim that somehow these two alternatives take a comparable amount of time (and the people suggesting that I must have no taste in vegetables or live in suburbia).
I don't think there is a single rule. I depends entirely which day/hour you do the shopping and where. When I lived in Switzerland supermarkets were closed from saturday at 5pm during the weekend. Which means doing your shopping on friday night or saturday would take a lot of time as a lot of people were doing the same. Doing it any other day of the week was much quieter.
I don't necessarily shop every day, but I do it several times a week. Also I don't buy my vegetables at the supermarket but at the fruteria (spanish place where you only buy fruits and vegetables). I mostly avoid premade dishes, I even do my own pizzas and tart doughs as well as bread sometimes. That means I am cooking every day. Problem with shopping once a week is I would have to decide for 7 breakfasts, 7 meals and at least 6 dinners. That is a lot of planning and live very little room for improvisation unless you are wiling to waste things or have a giant refrigerator which I have no room for in my european kitchen.
And yes I enjoy going out for a walk/ride every day after work so it is not annoying at all.
There is a lot of parameters to take into account, home space, schedules, shop opening hours, proximity, if tap water is drinkable and taste good...YMMV.
I think that is an overestimate because you can have leftovers and also breakfast is generally pretty easy, but I agree that there is greater planning overhead.
My partner and I compile a list of all the meals we want to make for the next two weeks before shopping, if you get in the habit it doesn't take too too long.
1. my fridge wouldn't be big enough
2. I have chosen to live carless because I don't have my own parking space and it is very difficult to find a parking space at any given time of the day close to my place.
3. I can only carry 2 european sized grocery shooping bags and a small backpack with my motorbike (a maxi scooter as they call it) when I go there with my gf. I can carry more in a hiking backpack if I go alone and I could theorically buy a bigger top case, similar to the big cube the pizza delivery riders are using but that would still be less than a fully loaded shopping cart.
And I am saying that someone may still find it more "convenient" to do so in spite of whatever additional time may or may not be involved. Convenience is far too nuanced and dependent upon personal preference for you to be stating, as an absolute, that it is not more convenient for someone to shop every day than it is once every week or two.
And I say this as someone who shops on a more weekly or bi-weekly basis.
The madhouse of a Costco or supermarkets on a weekend is time efficient, but it’s stressful.
A quiet and daily shopping experience can be a pleasant way to unwind after a day of work.
I usually decide what I want to cook on the evening when I go grocery shopping. Weekends kind of suck because I have to plan two days ahead. (and have to carry two days worth of food)
As a result when I do go to a supermarket myself for something it's not enough to warrant more than a basket, but man is it a nightmare having to actually 'search' for stuff instead of just typing it into a box!
sometimes I do something really ridiculous which is get a pickup order for my non-produce items and then go into the store just to buy the produce.
this is actually something I like about shopping into a basket. it forces me to be more intentional about my food choices. instead of a ton of snacks, I buy simple ingredients that can be combined into lots of different meals. it also prevents me from overflowing the pantry of my small apartment.
I typically allocate two thirds of my basket staples (milk, eggs, pasta, canned tomatoes, canned beans, rice) and top off the remaining third with whatever fruits/vegetables look good and possibly some chicken thighs or a nice steak. this is enough to feed myself for two weeks, though I could go as much as three if I go heavier on the staples.
obviously how you choose to shop is up to you. but you can fit a lot of healthy ingredients into a single basket if you're strategic about it.
We’re not big meat nor processed food consumers, and ordering take-out food is oftentimes comparable (if you add in the opportunity cost of the time and energy spent cooking).
> ordering take-out food is oftentimes comparable
I find people who do the daily shopping thing tend to order more take out than people who do the bulk shopping thing. it might have to do with them skewing younger though
Gus's are not faster than a Safeway or Whole Foods in my experience, ethnic markets definitely are.
Versus just popping into the green grocer on your way back from whatever other walking or bicycling errand in the second most dense city in the US..
Also, what do your taste buds and nutritionist say about the value of produce freshness?
I think street parking difficulty really depends on the neighborhood, in general SF is no Manhattan. I also grew up in the city and based on my observation seem to find parking considerably faster than my peers, so YMMV.
When I lived near Dolores park, if it wasn't the weekend parking was really easy. In Divorce triangle, parking is a little harder but still not that bad.
e: Duboce triangle, not divorce triangle haha
Where we live now the super-market is oftentimes closer to our building’s entrance compared to where I park our car (the supermarket is obviously always in the same place, but the parking location is variable from day to day, depending on luck). Even at the place where we staid before this, the tram station was just across the street, so it was doable to get out of work, pass by the supermarket, get in the tram, home.
As I now work from home (since even before the pandemic) I value the shopping and the interaction with the supermarket’s cashiers for itself, not quite like in a Shop Around the Corner way but, nevertheless, it kind of builds some “community”-like vibe.
I also do the shopping for our two pets by walking to the pet-shop myself, it’s a 15-20 minute walk each way I’d say. It would be a little cheaper to buy their food online, in bulk, and would “save” that time that I spend walking to and back from the shop, but, like mentioned above, buying food for our pets while talking with the pet-food cashier about what new pet treats they have brought in or some other stuff like that is an experience that I value for itself.
I lived in Russia and Armenia and Czech Republic for quite a few years now, and the difference in how the cities are laid out is quite apparent; having a small but well stocked market every couple hundred meters really makes planning _far_ easier, and frequent trips are not a problem. Before COVID hit, it used to be that I'd just stop at the market on the first floor of my building and grab the few perishable essentials I needed (meat, some vegetables) and had plenty to cook for myself and for friends/neighbors that would visit.
This simply isn't the case in the US, even in the most modern cities. The corner markets/bodegas/whatever don't come close to what the common market in Europe has; you can get pretty alright quality _whatever_ at these markets, and leave the more exotic stuff (mostly asian ingredients/items or non-common spices) for when you go to a super market.
That isn't to say that no one ever does the traditional hypermarket run outside of the US; seeing babushkas and their hand carts packed with a week's worth of food and drinks trudging down the lane is a normal sight, but just as frequently they're stopping by the meat market near their commie block or by the small shops at the base of their building to get a few quick essentials.
It's honestly far more convenient; and at least prior to Ukraine situation, the home delivery options in Russia were fantastic, albeit a bit abusive of the work force when it came to wages.
I wonder if I could train one of these mutts to pull a cart.
The shop is 2min by car and next to my kids' school so it's quite convenient.
I could shop in a cheaper store further away but having fresh meat, fish, fruit and vegetables is a great plus.
There are 4 grocery stores in easy walking distance to me, and a few more within a 10 min drive. There are also over a dozen specialty markets in that same radius. And a weekly farmers market about a 10 min walk away.
I go food shopping ~3 times a week and just pick up what we need for the next couple of days.
Big box stores are different. I guess the prices on Amazon are now significantly higher and delivery is taking longer these days, to make the trip to a trip to a Walmart or Target. Still I don't understand how some people's eyes light up as they push around shopping carts.
It just shows me how much I don't understand other people's lives. And a reason to be even more polite when interacting with strangers.
Pick-up doesn't tend to list every option available. Pick-up also doesn't let you see the fruit or vegetables that are going into your cart until you've already paid. (I spend A LOT of money on fruit which approaches 50% of my diet on some days).
Delivery there is a fee and I by principal don't try to use services that incur a fee when I can perform the task myself. This is also why I don't use delivery for pizza.
I frankly don't trust strangers doing the pick-up. I've had to use this service a couple of times during self-isolation during the height of the pandemic and there was always something out-of-stock, which seemed implausible, as I never had an issue with my groceries being out of stock.
I don't see how shopping is boring or tiresome, it can definitely be agitating to have to deal with the entire spectrum of your local populous in a cramped labyrinth but you are walking, searching, and making decisions. It is definitely a chore though.
I'm visiting the grocery store at least once per day on average but I also live a mile away. With work-from-home/work-remote it helps to feed the social need in me, even if I'm not chatting with strangers, I'm seeing them.
This is the big one for me. All current grocery delivery options in my area rely on gig workers, which is essentially having any random person on the street touch your food.
I used to use Peapod, which had actual employees, so there's a bit of extra responsibility and in theory safety/reliability. Not really much worse than, say, a restaurant. Unfortunately they completely left the Midwest in Feb 2020 (great timing eh?).
Maybe these services use dark stores, where they aren't running around your local supermarket picking up items but have a private warehouse in the city. So lots of things are out of stock.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_store
If you account for it objectively, no way.
I'm lazy and often do takeout, but it's definitely much more expensive. A $20 takeout meal can be done for less than $5 by cooking it all at home.
Not using a cart allows you to gauge the weight of everthing and it is especially useful if you walk or cycle to the supermarket. Now I am working from home so I just go several times a week, I definitely don't mind doing that as the first thing I want to do when I stop working is having a walk or a bicycle ride outside. Before I used to do that when commuting back home.
Think about it.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/126/
Or, heck, even just a gallon of milk?
That basket gets pretty heavy pretty fast, depending on what you're buying.
[1]https://thefixturezone.com/shopping-basket-on-wheels-with-pu...
[2]http://m.thai.groceryshoppingtrolley.com/sale-3255999-colorf...
I decide whether I take cart or basket depending on my shopping list, obviously if I am going to buy heavy things I am not going to carry it around shop in basket or if it's one of those shops with very small area behind checkout it's better to put stuff back to cart.
Best compromise is bigger basket on wheels (which can be pulled) for medium purchases, no need to bother with coin, no need to carry heavier stuff in hand and no need to return it back to inconvenient location plus in theory it gives you time to organize your grocery later after checkout.
Btw I don't have car, so I carry everything in backpack, either big (50-60L) or medium one (~30L) and eventually lighter things (bread/cakes/chips etc) in big plastic bag, cart vs basket have again nothing to do with this.
By your logic you should take with you only limited amount of cash, if you have such bad self control that you need to limit yourself with basket size and honestly I think you should seek some psychological help if your self control is that bad.
It’s also addressed pretty early on in the posted article.
People generally go to Costco about twice a month. Costco is a bulk goods store, and you pay for the ability to shop there. It'd be sort of stupid and wasteful to go to Costco to pick up one item unless you're just really into rotisserie chickens.
Quite capable of bringing home a week’s worth of groceries in one go.
If you live within walking distance of a store and don’t like shopping daily, buying your own cart (of a different style/color than the store’s) can be a great deal.
https://images.thdstatic.com/productImages/e1f8af99-7af9-45e...
https://946e583539399c301dc7-100ffa5b52865b8ec92e09e9de9f4d0...
I think a better comparison would be people complaining about frictionless checkout (where you just walk out like Amazon grocery stores) in the same way as shopping carts, which is actually a whole new and better experience but can feel so weird that people feel uncomfortable about it.
(disclaimer: I’ve never actually tried an Amazon Go store but I do avoid self-checkout whenever I have fruits/veggies to check out)
This makes some assumptions.
Off the top of my head:
1) The shopkeeper is always available to grab your purchases without a wait. 2) You already know exactly which products you want, and/or there aren't different versions of products to select between. 3) The shopkeeper is trustworthy enough to get you the actual products you want. 4) You aren't a person that the shopkeeper is going to discriminate against.
There are lots of good reasons to want to pick out your own groceries.
There's definitely advantages to someone picking out your groceries for you, but also some drawbacks.
Give me whole milk is easier and simpler than “give me this particular brand of whole milk”.
When you have needs—or even just desires—that aren't The One Available Product, suddenly you're SOL. Sometimes with grievous health consequences.
• You're able to speak loud and clear.
• You can speak the same language as the shopkeeper.
even this depends on the type of shopper you are. if I'm buying a bunch of pasta, curbside pickup is great, and delivery is even better. but if I'm buying an ny strip, I want to see all the choices and pick the one that looks best. similar for fruits and vegetables, I don't trust the professional shopper to evaluate ripeness on my behalf. some things you just have to do yourself.
This is new to me. Do you just mean that the placement is decided by distributors? I'm pretty sure I have seen store employees putting stuff on the shelves from time to time at my local supermarket.
Smaller stores and chains are often stocked by the store itself, even if Coke delivered the pallet.
The end caps of isles are sold to the highest bidder, typically by the week; if that bidder is coca-cola they manage that display as well, subject to the constraints of the store.
One of the innovations of Frys Electronics was to try to run their shops that way, as they started by selling serial cables and other computer supplies in their family's grocery chain. It only partially worked as the vendors weren't really equipped to do this, the way the food companies are.
Home Depot gets it right. They have a large table with a handheld wireless scanner, a receipt printer, a card payment terminal, and a touch screen that you don't need to interact with at all. All you have to do is start scanning and tap your card when you're done.
My solution is to avoid self-checkout at stores with crappy machines, or avoid those stores altogether. If Home Depot can do good self-checkout, why can't everyone else? That's the primary reason I frequent HD over Lowe's.
I've been seeing this more often in the past few months at understaffed low-cost retailers. When there's nobody around to override the machines, people get frustrated and move on to the next open machine without understanding what went wrong.
Five minutes later, the entire self-checkout area is offline, and the would-be customer sometimes feels sufficiently annoyed and neglected to walk off with their groceries.
Right, like I mentioned, it was a very weird first time experience. But my question was addressed to the parent commenter, who is clearly not a first-time user and is aware of how these systems work.
I was asking how it remains a hurdle to someone who's already familiar with it, because this is very far from my own experience. I honestly don't even notice the scale requirement anymore, because placing things on the scale has become subconscious
The store can damn well afford to pay someone to scan and bag the items, while I do the loyalty-card, payment-card cha-cha. The store isn't paying me to do all this shit.
It's fast, there are no lines, it's less work for everyone.
Perhaps its just my region exploding in population, but if I don't go to the grocery store at ridiculous hours (i.e. 6am on the dot this morning), it takes me upwards of 30 minutes to navigate this new chaotic mess.
(And not necessarily the same people who shopped with them. People who find an abandoned shopping cart in the parking lot would often bring it back to the store to get at the coin.)
It’s a cute idea but I’m not sure it’s practical in the long run.
It has been practical for a long time, but you may be right in that they'll have a hard time with the younger generations that transition to being cashless.
Also, stray shopping carts left in the lot really doesn't seem like a big problem worth solving to me. The lots all have cart returns scattered throughout them, so you're never very far from one, and the vast majority of people use them.
But, I guess, American supermarkets are not anywhere near the cities.
Besides teenagers, grocery stores often hire mentally impaired people for bagging and cart wrangling. They seem to enjoy the work more than the teenagers.
Isn't the point here that the teenager has that job because there are no coin slots in carts, so there has to be someone collecting the carts?
I don't know if the teenager would be happier without a job, but that is a bit of a leading question - it's not like fetching carts is the only job that exists. Maybe they would prefer to work a different job that doesn't involve cart wrangling, and involves spending more time doing something useful.
That's a big part of the reason to we don't let poor migrants into the country (almost whichever rich country you live in), and work menial jobs without a social safety net. 'Who wants to look at poor, miserable people?' Better to leave them to rot in other countries where we don't have to look at them..
I figure the coin is really just mostly there as a signifier that it's your job to return the cart and not some store employees job.
Ie you can essentially contract out bringing the cart back for a quarter of a dollar.
In Germany, you could theoretically walk your cart a few blocks to your home, then leave it on the street.
I saw plenty of supermarkets with carts asking for coin having their cart stolen and abandoned across town. I think it's mainly linked with whether you have juvenile "gangs" fooling around or not
Similar to how when you are working as a programmer, it's good for not to break 'master'. You could rely completely on an honour system, or you could have an automated merge-check. In most places, the merge-check can be arbitrarily easy to bypass, but programmers would still by and large abide it.
I wonder if someone could correlate shopping cart size to average purchase size.
I was really surprised to have such strong negative feelings since I have plenty of good memories of shopping there as a kid. It was always a fun place to go since there were usually lots of free food samples.
My understanding is that grocery stores deliberately chose to use inferior carts in order to make them less attractive to steal, or something like that. I would really like to see them re-evaluate that decision.
The only place around me that has 4x360° wheels is IKEA (i.e. occasional-not-frequent destination), but I prefer them generally to the standard-issue sort.
A supermarket local to me had stickers for a while you could grab as a customer and stick on a cart if it had a stuck wheel. They'd then take that cart out for repair. They don't do the stickers anymore, but I figure they just keep on top of keeping the wheels running smoothly nowadays. Haven't had a cart pull to one side in years now.
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/nathaniel-meyersohn
Our current setup I find quite relaxing.
* Order groceries delivered once every 2 weeks. Basically a reorder of previous order with some alterations - 10 minutes effort.
* Top up at local independent grocery nearly every day. Sometimes twice a day (1.5 blocks away). 1-10 items. Easy walk.
* Order takeout or restaurant 1-2 times per week
I really hate trolleys, lines and hunting for items at big stores.
It seems proximity to the store and the number of people you're routinely buying food for would be the bigger predictors of who would use a cart over a basket, as well as lifestyle. I mean, some people choose to drive even if they live next door to the market.
If your hand cart gets full of groceries, you might not pick up other stuff on that trip, like light bulbs, ballpoint pens, a potted plant, or a toy for your kid.
After you've left the grocery store, you still need those things. So you go to the hardware store, office supply store, nursery, or toy store because that's where you prefer to buy that stuff if you're making a separate trip anyway.
Grocery stores get those purchases because of convenience. Take away the convenience and they might lose the purchases.
I walk to the grocery store and used to use a basket, carrying food home. Non-food was delivered by Amazon.
Then near the end of 2020 when so many trips per week was getting to be too much a hassle, I bought a personal cart that I bring to the store with me. Now Amazon is more of a hassle for plenty of non-food items, because it's so trivial to add it to the cart, so I've been getting less online and more from the store.
If there's really no competition nearby, you won't be the first to invest in new technology like shopping carts.
Not to mention that if you have a big trolley, you’re going to fill it and buy more, whether you need it or not
Even that is already a win for the store — you're spending the same amount money in total, while spending less of cashier's time and other store's resources.
With the cart, I just put them in when I pass by them.
Also, if I walk or bike to the store, a basket conveniently alerts me when I have picked up too much food to carry home comfortably.
I wonder if shopping carts became popular alongside the rise of the car, thus you were more likely to get a “cars worth of groceries.” Another innovation in the early 20th century was the rise of bare-bones, almost-at-cost grocers outside of town that you had to drive to which during the Great Depression was were people were starting to go more often, instead of the local market.
Why not use the tote bags directly instead of the basket? This way it calibrates for size but also weight & resistance. This also gets you into a habit of having your bag deployed before you start shopping so less chance to forget it and have to buy another one.
I shop with a single bag sized for my ride back, even the baskets are way too large.