The average grocery store carries 30,000+ items, I don't know how people will find new products in a world (decades from now) where dark grocery shopping is the norm. We all only have vast awareness because we know of the goods by walking the aisles.

The web apps for grocery shopping have carousels that might showcase to you two or three new items, but there simply is nothing analogous to aisle walking. You can't even really see the full inventory in these web apps either. To me, that's a huge discoverability issue that doesn't yet present because people have prior experience shopping IRL.

Since December, all of my grocery shopping has been done via Shipt.[0] What is available via the web site and app is fraction of what's available in the store. I've lucked out because they shop at the store I used to shop at; so, I can add a detailed special request. (Instead of just saying "pumpernickel bread," I can add that it's not in the main, prepackaged bread section; but, in the bakery section, on the left side, behind the bread slicing machine.)

[0] Not by choice, a combination of Necrotizing Fasciitis, Sepsis, and Gangrene left me in a wheelchair

I feel the same way about books: In terms of enjoyability and chance discovery, browsing through amazon.com or whatever just doesn't compare with browsing the shelves of an actual book store or library.

Yeah I doubt that. Personal shoppers can't even pick out the correct produce now.

It's like they search out for the least ripe or most bruised thing. Seems like it's because it's not for them so they don't care, or they don't know how to.

The other point against that theory is people will buy what they want to buy, that may be healthy food, it may not be.

Unless you're talking about taking away the choice and distributing food based on some sort of consortium which is authoritarian and assumes we have sound dietary science which is false.

On the money point, have you seen the fees these personal shopping services add? In no way is it cheaper to have someone else shop for you.

I have to say... as much as I don't like them... WalMart does the online shopping properly. I had to switch to delivery / pickup for a while during 2020 and found them to be the best. But I think this is because the people shopping for your food are paid by the hour and not by the job. They are regular employees of the store. They aren't rushed to get your order, and 50 other orders, checkout, and drive around town burning their own gas for a paltry fee. I never had shitty produce delivered, and substitutions actually make sense.

How bad is it when WalMart is treating its employees better than most?

> How bad is it when WalMart is treating its employees better than most

I work with a number of people that have an irrational hate-boner for Walmart for the reasons stated yet they are all Prime members.

Both Walmart and Amazon have horrid hours and working conditions. The difference is Bezos starts them at 2-3x minimum wage, while Walmart is at the rock bottom.

I’m surprised there isn’t more discussion of the fees associated with these services. Most people can’t afford to spend 25+% extra on their groceries just to gain some convenience

And some of us simply refuse to. I'd rather drive the 10 miles into town to pick up my dinner than give GrubHub money that I'd prefer to see going to the restaurant.

Frankly, unless I'm drunk, stoned, or sick, I can't see ever using a non-store delivery service.

>I strongly believe personalized nutrition and shopping experiences will have major impact on non communicable diseases.

What about all the poor people without smartphones? We have such an unequal distribution of wealth and technology in this county that (particularly on site like this with mostly digital natives) it is easy to loose sight of the fact that the poorest ~20% still don't have basic smart phones, or maybe even basic flip phones. Hell they might not even have email accounts.

One thing that has been made clear by all the social programs that were stood up during the pandemic is that landlines and snail mail are still the most common denominator of communication for the poor. Until we get to some simple "smartphones for all" program, I don't see this changing any time soon.

Or the people who have smartphones and are sick of it and pine for the old ways, but feel compelled to keep one by society increasingly expects that everybody have one and capriciously install invasive apps on it, even for things like buying groceries!

What's invasive about a grocery store app? Seems less invasive than going to the store - they could always record you there and they certainly know what you buy.

If the app wasn't spyware, they wouldn't be so keen on getting me to use it instead of using a web page.

Nobody wants to use a grocery store web page on their phone, and nobody wants to use a computer instead of their phone.

Web pages work just fine on phones, except companies are suspiciously forceful with their recommendations that you use their app instead. Don't pretend Reddit isn't doing this; others do as well.

Are you kidding? I frequently stop what I'm already doing on my phone in frustration, and get out a laptop or turn on a computer to do it in a proper browser/screen/keyboard instead of an app/mobile browser.

> What about all the poor people without smartphones?

Poor people have smartphones. Even poor people in developing nations are likely to have smartphones. Basic smartphones are ultra cheap commodities.

>Poor people have smartphones

Some poor people have smartphones. I guess some will get to eat. Also while there is penatration of smartphones into poorer countries, it is hardly 100%

>However, compared to other markets across the globe, India’s smartphone penetration rate is still relatively low. [1]

[1] https://www.statista.com/topics/4600/smartphone-market-in-in...

> Some poor people have smartphones. I guess some will get to eat.

I have no idea how you got from "smartphone apps will affect how people shop for food" to "anyone without a smartphone will be starved."

Similar to their initial point, they just made it up.

> With the emergence of dark grocery stores, there will be major opportunity in the space of personalized nutrition. Shoppers will be more connected with a mobile app when it comes to their grocery store experience, and those apps have the potential to steer you toward an optimal diet that saves money and improves health.

What a rosy view of grocery stores. I used to work in grocery and later a "dark grocery" store. It ain't all puppies and sunshine, sonny. Grocery apps are engineered to hoover up your data and entice you to spend more money, especially on things you normally like to buy. Average ticket size is higher on pickup orders over in store shopping. These apps definitely enable junk food habits with targeted discounts and advertising. Trying to subsist on a diet? Here's a free gallon or $0.99 5-gallon tub of ice cream. Good luck with that diet.

Source: I worked for Kroger for over a decade in every department.

Anyone trying to personalize their optimal nutrition is already in the top 5% of Americans in regards to healthy eating. We are so, so, so far from even baseline semi-ok diets in the most generalized all-of-humanity guidelines.

Grocery stores are incentivized to sell as much food as possible, which does not align with keeping their customers as healthy as possible.

But, assuming altruistic grocers, it would be interesting to see how they decide what food to steer people towards. Would I have to share my medical records and height/weight/exercise routine or would they personalize based on something else?

Or otherwise generate the best possible margin. Either by volume or by price. They might optimize slightly differently, but never for the best of the consumer. That is they will aim to generate as much as possible in total sale value and on other hand have as high as possible margin with the that value. Think of health-insurance, not exactly great for consumer.

I don’t trust a corpo-run dark store to provide me quality produce when the corpo’s first law is profits above everything else.

Rather than thinking about tech solutions for the health epidemic surrounding foods, I think we need to reign in the prepackaged food industry who relies on unnatural recipes to cut costs and increase shelf life and who adds tons of sugar to everything for flavor.

> Shoppers will be more connected with a mobile app when it comes to their grocery store experience, and those apps have the potential to steer you toward an optimal diet that saves money and improves health.

Apps silently tacking $0.10/lb onto produce because you own an iPhone and have a history of buying "premium" stuff...

What's a dark grocery store?

Dark stores are physical stores only used for online shopping. I remember hearing about "dark kitchens" which are restaurants doing deliveries, but not accessible/visible from the outside.

Are those the same as ghost kitchens?

Yeah same concept basically. Take over a strip mall space, paper over the windows, set up the inside in a way that's optimized for delivery only.

There's some interesting reporting on the various optimizations like all the isle being half width and one way to save floor space, or they don't put like items together so all the different ketchup brands (for example) are distrusted throughout the store so if it tells a picker to go to isle 5 shelf W and get heinz ketchup, there won't be any other similar items/brands near the heinz ketchup to confuse the picker with. They also arrange the stores in roughly descending weight so that heavy things go in first and light/fragile at the end.

Interesting, I saw a wendy's "Food truck" doing that near me. I suspect it was for delivery only, not even takeout.

It's the same concept yes. A grocery "store" (localized warehouse) accessible only to delivery services.

Small grocery warehouses used by Instant delivery companies. From this post[1] by Tanay J

A. Dark Stores / Fulfillment Centers Instant-Delivery Apps operate their own dark stores / fulfillment centers, typically one per neighborhood they operate in. Since these are not meant for consumers, space can be used more efficiently and typically the cost to operate these (at scale) as a percent of revenue is lower than rent space for grocery stores.

https://tanay.substack.com/p/understanding-the-instant-deliv...

No shopping floor, just a warehouse. You order online.

This is interesting because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Distributing went bankrupt and afaik never came back. Sometimes I wonder if capitalism has any memory.

I believe a grocery store that only serves deliveries. You can’t actually go and buy things in person.

A warehouse.

Not necessarily. Some dark stores near me (city center) have about the same layout as physical stores, but more cramped - delivery people need to pick the items from shelves.

Sells only dark matter food.