[wiether]

I have this conversation regularly with friends, family, coworkers...

And I've not yet been able to establish the right criteria to guess how a person is buying their groceries.

Location, age, income, number of people in the household, physical ability...

A single guy living in the city center with good income? Takes his car to go in big supermarket outside the city.

A family with four kids living in the suburbs? Goes everyday in the small shops.

[VLM]

I've found two very general personality criteria for online ordering.

Planners. The people who have a meal plan in Google Calendar for the next week and rarely have to "grab one thing on the way home from the store". The people who literally have no idea what they're eating on Thursday will go to the store today or tomorrow, who knows what they'll buy.

Multitaskers. The people who do their grocery shopping on the couch while not really watching TV, or similar downtime when its job #2. I used to shop online while theoretically cooking. It'll be five minutes until this is done I'll spend a couple minutes looking in the fridge for eggs / milk / etc and add to next weeks order.

A specific criteria I've found is people in general don't trust the delivery services for non-hyperprocessed food. I can trust a sealed bag of oreos is like every other mass produced food-adjacent substance. I want to select my own roast from whats on the shelf or my own apples. So people who only eat processed food products that come in plastic tend to like online ordering, people who mostly eat more natural food tend to dislike online ordering.

You have to know people pretty well to determine their project management style and their diet.

[wiether]

That's interesting.

I'm a planner and that's one of the reasons I don't order my groceries. If there's one thing I know I can't rely on, it's to be delivered on schedule and/or receiving exactly what I ordered.

Meanwhile if I go to the store, I can find an alternative or go elsewhere if I can't find what I wanted.

And I'm also a "natural food" person, so I'd rather pick things myself. Furthermore, if I crush a fruit on my way home, it's on me and I'll deal with it peacefully. If I'm being delivered a crush fruit, I'll get mad at the company I ordered from and I'll have find a way to be compensated.

[adamc]

I don't think that works either. I'm not a meal planner, but I will usually just make do with food I've already bought. Nothing appeals? I might eat cheese toast or yogurt.

[infecto]

At least for me. I buy fresh food via online ordering because I hate wasting time these days. Driving even to a nearby store takes 10mins round trip. Then having to walk through the store and fine what I need and checkout. I would much rather order online and get it delivered. Produce can still be a gamble, pickers have no incentive to pick the best produce but for the average meal, that’s fine.

[sroussey]

We have mapped the planet, yet no grocery has a freaking map to find what you need.

[mrguyorama]

That's intentional. Grocery stores are laid out to encourage you to spend more.

Like almost everything people complain about nowadays, this is not a tech problem, has never been a tech problem, and cannot be fixed with tech.

[sroussey]

Third parties with tech could fix it.

[wiether]

Is this a US thing?

I think here in France the best example is Lidl. The stores are laid out the same, so not only your usual store doesn't change, but you can go to any store in the country and find what you want at the same spot.

Personally, with self-checkout, I spend less than 15mn in the store to do a week of groceries.

[infecto]

Not sure if it is just a US thing but it to add a little more depth. Most stores as already stated want you to wander a bit to possibly purchase more things but the other piece is most stores custom to local preferences both on what they carry and where it’s located.

Thought differently most major chains capture all of this data and can optimize stores for sales.

I think the bigger complaint is a typical US grocery store carries an insane amount of SKUs. If I was just going to Trader Joe’s it’s no problem. Low sku count layouts never change. Walmart has probably 10x the skus and it’s a struggle sometimes just finding what you want. Oh I need dry dill, well in the spice section there are 3 or 4 brands. Within those sometimes it’s not in alphabetical order. Things are misplaced or just out of stock.

[mbg721]

When I was a kid, 30 years ago, some grocery stores did have an aisle guide printed on the cart. I haven't seen one recently, but they at least did exist.

[infecto]

That’s mostly my problem. Some of the apps have locations, often I find things not there. But for most stores they want you to wander and shop.

[themadturk]

Though I don't like shopping at Walmart, I still have to (no store in my area, even "supercenters," has everything I need), and their phone app is absolutely stellar at telling me where a particular product is. Especially handy where there's no staff on the floor (as often happens).