[ffgjgf1]

> model should be adopted elsewhere too, the opposite of going hyperscale

So you are saying there were no grocery stores in the US before Piggly Wiggly opened up?

It was the model that preceded the current one throughout the western world. It clearly failed because it couldn’t compete with the efficiency (and much better customer experience and prices) provided by supermarkets.

It wouldn’t work without imposing some artificial limitations (as is the case in quite a few European cities) which have a significant productivity cost.

[082349872349872]

Last place I lived in the US still had corner markets (in the 1990s), because the neighbourhood predated cars.

OTOH I once worked in a city there that was younger than I was, and it was a disaster: nothing but drives to franchise "concepts", and had there been anyplace to walk to, there weren't even any sidewalks.

Now I live in a village dating to the 14th century, and don't even need to walk to the store, let alone drive: my groceries get delivered to my doorstep.

As far as I'm concerned, the traditional "supermarket" model is one in which the customer is used as an ersatz employee: you do your own delivery driving, you do your own stock picking, and these days you even do your own checkout scanning.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

At first thought I'd see this in similar ways, with the exception of anything that is (or should be) fresh, like fruits, vegetables, meat & fish/sea-fruits.

How is your delivery experience with those?

At second thought I'd miss the haptics/olfactorics of smelling/tasting new kinds(or so far unknown to me) of cheeses, or the general discoverability of other items in store, like soaps, deodorants, shower-gels, shaving-stuff, etc.

Searching and ordering these online is a bad substitute for me.

At third thought all of this delivery-hype should be shunned, because it's just cementing in a class of low-wage workers, ready to be exploited, for the fucking convenience of all the the tasteless assholes giving a shit about such things.

[082349872349872]

Fruits and veggies are fresh[0]. We don't cook meat & fish ourselves. Refrigerated stuff comes in a special cold bag with ice; frozen stuff comes in a special box with insulation and dry ice.

We're old, so discovery is not a big issue — we explore other things; weekly shopping is much more about exploitation[1]. (being able to start from last week's baseline online is a big win over manual shopping, and to some degree we get exploration anyway, as the store always adds in freebies of items they'd like us to try)

Finally, we're not in an anglophone country, so delivery (and removal of the special containers afterwards) is done by a combination of (a) the postal service, (b) transport companies, and (c) employees of the store. All covered by at least union-negotiated baselines; all with insurance and much more than 2 weeks paid vacation; all paid decently[2]. No "independent contractors".

[0] if we cared more, we'd get them at the Friday farmers' market.

[1] we are eating to live, not living to eat

[2] just looked it up: transport employees are USD ~60k/yr, postal carriers ~67k/yr, so the store is probably in that range.

[ffgjgf1]

> we're not in an anglophone country, so delivery

I’m not sure not having those things is at all unique to Anglophone countries