Amazon to Launch Online Grocery Store

Aryabhata writes "It might sound like a bad flashback to the dot-com days, but news is that Amazon is planning to test the waters with an old idea; the online grocery store!. To its defense Amazon is only attempting this with nonperishables like peanut butter, potato chips, and canned soup implying that there's no refrigeration required--ordinary warehouse shelves will do fine."

Comments

Amazon has lost its advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

Previously I shopped Amazon for price and convenience, but with the plethora of new markets they've entered (none of which I'm interested in buying online) and cheaper competitors, they've lost my custom. While all businesses need to diversify their revenue streams, I find this jack-of-all-trades attitude divering theirs.

Re:Amazon has lost its advantage

[InsideTheAsylum]

Why does branching them out to other markets cause them to lose your business? They still provide the same items at their same great prices. I think you're just bitching about a non-issue, honestly.

Not That Different

[Distinguished Hero]

To its defense Amazon is only attempting this with nonperishables like peanut butter, potato chips, and canned soup implying that there's no refrigeration required--ordinary warehouse shelves will do fine."
Well, in that case, it isn't different from what Amazon was doing before hand, now is it? Amazon to Sell Stuff Online, Film at 11.

Peapod

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of this WebVan company, but the online grocery store that I do know - Peapod - is still around and, going by how often I've seen their vans parked in some residential neighbourhoods around Chicago, quite successful. And they do deliver perishables.

Re:Peapod

[kilodelta]

That's because Peapod pulls from regular Stop & Shop stores and distro centers. They also have agreements with other grocers in areas where Stop & Shop isn't prevalent.

Re:Peapod

[ChiRaven]

I was a Peapod customer until I moved out of Chicago, and they did a magnificent job. Deliveries were always within their time window, and their selections of produce were always fresh and "as specified" by me. It was a tremendous advantage when I was a technoslave for a major high-tech company and my wife was almost totally disabled. They were very understanding, and would deliver things right to our refigerator if needed.

Re:Peapod

[thc69]

My wife sometimes orders from Peapod. It costs significantly more than going into the Stop & Shop store. They do deliver to my rural area (well, as rural as you can get in Rhode Island), surprisingly.

I've often lamented the lack of a way to get cheap nonperishables online. For example, I want to buy a case of Stagg Chili, but it's so damned expensive. If Amazon can do better than Stagg's own online store, then I'll buy. Other stuff I'd generally buy generic...so if they can send me generic stuff, I'll buy in case volume.

I just checked -- their generic Rice Krispies alternative is a little cheaper per ounce than Peapod's genuine Kellog's Rice Krispies. In-store, S&S probably sells Kellog's about the same as Amazon's generic, and in-store S&S generic stuff is much cheaper. No sale.

They don't have plain old Kraft Mac & Cheese. They do have numerous sub-varieties of it -- spirals, cartoon-branded, supermac (I'm not familiar with that one), easy mac, etc. No sale.

$16 for 72oz of barbecue sauce. They have only one brand in two flavors. I use barbecue sauce two ways -- any cheap stuff in really big quantities for making a brisket in a crock pot, and specific brands in small quantities used condimentally. No sale.

Bowl Apetit 3 cheese rotini non-perishable just-add-water microwave meal: 12 for $16. Now we're getting somewhere.

Well, this is getting too time-consuming...I'd deal with it later, except it looks like I'm better off just making the 40 minute trip to the Wal Mart Supercenter.

Too bad soft drinks wouldn't work. I would buy a pallet of Diet Pepsi cans if I could get it cheap enough.

gentlemen, start your engines...

[Zaphod2016]

If online grocery shopping gives you flashbacks to failed experiments like Webvan, you are not alone.

In fact, here they come now...

Re:gentlemen, start your engines...

[Basehart]

HomeGrocer.com used to be so cool. It was like living in the space age having the truck pull up and all those yummy groceries delivered straight to the kitchen table.

Seeing them fade away with all the other wacked out .com ideas was such a shame.

Re:gentlemen, start your engines...

[Helen O'Boyle]

I so miss the peach. "Here comes the grocery store" was even a cool slogan. And in the Seattle area, Larry's Market (high-end) produce was what they delivered when you ordered produce.

I used them twice a month. Today, safeway.com delivers, but it just isn't the same.

Somewhere, I still have my Home Grocer mousepad and spreader knife.

I was excited to hear that the guy who started Home Grocer way back when was contemplating starting another similar service again, about a year ago. Silence since then. I guess it didn't work out.

In New York City, we already have that.

[Nybarius]

It's called Fresh Direct.

Re:In New York City, we already have that.

[winkydink]

It's success is directly linked to the high density of the population in NYC.

Re:In New York City, we already have that.

[lowrydr310]

It's success is directly linked to the high density of the population in NYC.

... and the lack of any real grocery store in NYC. I'll admit, I don't live in NYC (just across the Hudson in Dirty Jersey), but when I considered living in the city I didn't like the fact that I couldn't find a normal full-sized full service grocery store. There are a lot of small markets and plenty of produce stands where you can get very fresh produce. I liked that I would have been able to pick up fresh veggies for a meal on my way home from work, but that would add time to an already long commute. I could be wrong however. Is there a full-size, full-service Stop-N-Shop/Pathmark/Shop-Rite in NYC?

If I lived in the city, I would certainly take advantage of an online grocer with home delivery.

Re:In New York City, we already have that.

[Chris_Stankowitz]

There are several full-size, full-service shops in NYC. Not many mind you. I live about 1.5 miles from a PathMark in Manhattan, however I despise the 2+ hours of my life that I have to spend shopping and then transporting the times home. I get my shopping done with FreshDirect in about 15 mins and have them brought up to my Apt. ( a 5 story walk-up!). There is a small premium on a number of items most of which I wouldn't find in my local store anyway and a tip for the burly men who bring the food upstairs. All-in-all I spend appx. 20$ more by using Freshdirect. Given the value I place on my time, I might as well be making money. Chris-

Re:In New York City, we already have that.

[Geoff-with-a-G]

Actually, as an otherwise happy FreshDirect customer, I'm also interested in this. Having browsed Amazon's selection, I see quite a few things that I like, but am unable to get from FreshDirect.

Next frivolous patent...

[demongeek]

Ways to dispose of hundreds of thousands of dollars of junk food left over from the cafeteria....

Re:Next frivolous patent...

[Spy der Mann]

Ways to dispose of hundreds of thousands of dollars of junk food left over from the cafeteria....
... with only one click :)

Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

They could make money selling hard to find items, but not stuff that you can buy anywhere. There are a few things I can not buy locally that I would order if they had it, but I won't buy potato chips from them...

Of course, if this works then I should invest in UPS & FedEx...

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Mullen]

Agreed. I have always thought that someone could do pretty well selling hard to find items food items. There are probably a bunch of people who love food or food items that you just can't get where they currently live. I know there are a bunch of companies that do such on Amazon.com.

For example, I listen to Howard Stern and one his side kicks, Artie Lange, likes "Devil Dogs". I have never seen these things and it turns out you really can't get them on the West Coast. However, a quick search and I found a couple of places that will ship them out to me.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[xenocide2]

This is pretty much what Amazon is doing. They're currently only carrying rather high margin "premium" foods. For example, there's only one Campbell's soup in the soup section (and it's currently not available), the rest is full of Wolfgang Puck's brand of soup. Basically, rather than waste their precious warehouse space on low margin foods, they'll let the local stores do that while they sell you expensive food. So if you were expecting an Amazonian discount on ramen noodles, well, I might suggest a Costco card.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[ces]

There are a number of web stores out there who sell hard to find or gourmet items online. In fact I believe either Amazon itself or some of its partners are already selling gourmet foods.

The trick is to sell things where you aren't competing with local grocery stores or where volume can give you a huge price advantage.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[timeOday]

Of course, if this works then I should invest in UPS & FedEx...

My first reaction was, surely they'll be teaming with local grocery store chains to do this? But no:

Amazon will ship these things out the same way they ship everything else, through established shipping services like FedEx or UPS, so there's really no change in the infrastructure other than stocking a few thousand new products

Maybe I'm crazy, but I can't see UPS shipping a box the size of a grocery cart for a price I would pay. The bad news is, nobody will use the service. The good news is, it won't really matter, at least no moreso than stocking any unpopular toy or book.

What would make so much more sense IMHO, is for a large grocery chain to do this. The website could be integrated with inventory software for local stores. Really the only expense would be paying additional bag boys to load up vans and deliver the groceries, depending on the popularity of the service.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[jacksonj04]

The UK has been doing this for some years now. Sainsburies, Asda (Owned by WalMart) and Tesco all offer to-door deliveries.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Apraxhren]

Devil Dogs are crap, if you want real snack food you have to try Tastykake. They are responsible for making Philadelphia the fattest city till a few years ago, well that than and Geno's. Everyone in their life should have the pleasure of having a Peanut Butter Kandy Kake and a Butterscotch Krimpet.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Red Alastor]

They could make money selling hard to find items, but not stuff that you can buy anywhere. There are a few things I can not buy locally that I would order if they had it, but I won't buy potato chips from them...

And I want them to sell me food I can buy locally by striking deals with local stores. I could shop online for what stores in my town sell and have it delivered in the next 24 hours. If they combine deliveries, it would cost less than FedEx. The grocery store gets a competitive advantage, Amazon gets its cut and the customer is happy.

In my town, stores complain about lack of shelf/floor space. If people bought from Amazon, the employees could take stuff right out of the warehouse which means less stuff you need place to display.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[TopShelf]

The groceries are available for free shipping when you order $25 or more, so no worries there from the consumer side - and Amazon drives such high volume through UPS, et al that they get fantastically discounted rates.

I could see this being really useful for bulk sizes of items. Things like cereal, laundry detergent, etc. As long as the price is competitive, it could make a portion of the grocery shopping that much easier.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[AuMatar]

If you're a member of Amazon Prime, you get free 2 day shipping and reduced price 1 day shipping. Membership costs $70 a year, IIRC. FOr us members, this becomes a great deal.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I want Snacky Cakes and Cheesy Poofs.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Breakfast Pants]

I want to be able to go online, check off everything that I need for the week at my local grocery store, head over there 20 minutes later with it bagged and ready (and still have the ability to pick up my own fruit while I'm there so it isn't bruised etc.).

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a tip, but Sainsbury is a proper noun, making the plural "Sainsbury's", not "Sainsburies".

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Zaphod2016]

Devil Dogs are gross. Save you cash and try a SUZY-Q from Hostess.

Trust me- my left arm tingles all the time.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[elvum]

cf http://www.cybercandy.co.uk/ (in the UK). A fantastic site - the only reliable UK supplier of liquid smoke that I have yet found, amongst other things...

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up in New York with Devil Dogs and Susy Q's. I can literally TASTE the cemicals in Susy-Q's! Devil Dogs are the BEST!! I wish I could get them locally here in Los Angeles.

One piece of warning though, NEVER EVER eat a Devil Dog without someting to drink with it! You will choke!

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tastykake? You pretty much only see that shit at a dollar store. Hell, I always thought it was one of those generic "value" brands. People actually like it?

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Lord Flipper]

However, a quick search and I found a couple of places that will ship them out to me.

Back in the 80s, living in San Diego at the time, safely 'before' the wacky.com thing, two buddies [one from Detroit, other from NYC] and myself, used to have a big old shipment of 'belly bombs', oops, I mean rat burgers, air-frieghted in, frozen, from a White Castle in, I believe it was, Astoria. That was livin' large, lemme tell ya...

Three or four years ago, in Boca Raton, Publix Stores had a delivery service, and that was awesome. Order online in the evening and they'd have it at the door inside a tight timeframe the next afternoon. They ended it, unfortunately.

We have services similar to the one mentioned, in Chicago, here in Minneapolis, but I'm in a barn, basically, downtown, and the companies want building mgr's permission to have some sort of 'community' drop-off inside the bldg... PITA. What I'd like to see is more cheese and 'real' oil, there's not enough Italians here. An honest-to-God Italian deli/market could make a killing here, and a delivery thing on top of that... somebody'd end up a zillionaire.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[shdwtek]

Tastykake rocks. Those Peanut Butter ones I liked the best. Haven't found them around here though.

Re:Better sell hard to find stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was looking around the prices.. Things like cereal *aren't* cheaper than they are, at least on sale, from Safeway, Albertsons, etc.. (yes, with their cards). For example, the big boxes of cereal are fairly often $2.50 each if counted as part of a buy 1 get 1 free offer.. Amazon's food prices look like list prices for everything. Even Wolfgang Puck soups often get down to $1-$1.75/can or so depending upon various sales. Their case rate isn't near that.

So?

[ToddML]

I already routinely order groceries from Fresh Direct http://www.freshdirect.com/ . Its huge in the NYC area, the selection is broad (far broader than what Amazon is offering), the service is excellent, and the overall experience is excellent.

Re:So?

[Pink Tinkletini]

Oh, sure, until the day the FreshDirect guy sticks his foot in the doorway and won't leave until you tip him. :-P Wasn't their policy originally not to accept any tips, ever, expressly to prevent situations like these? Or am I thinking of someone else (Kozmo, MaxDelivery)?

But I agree, on the whole, the FreshDirect experience is hard to beat. Did you ever see those signs at Fairway hanging from the ceiling, bashing FreshDirect and its owner for various injustices apropos nothing? Priceless.

Re:So?

[jb.hl.com]

And in the UK there's always Ocado.

Re:So?

[Geekenstein]

Remarkable. You're comparing a company that delivers to a very, very small area of the country to a multinational company that ships just about anywhere.

What precisely was the point to your post?

Re:So?

[JudasBlue]

Well, if this place delivers to the greater new york area, then he is talking a company that reaches about 1/13 of the US population, so I will give it to him. And I really doubt that Amazon is going to offer their plan on a multinational basis. They don't offer DVD players on a multinational basis, try to hit Amazon in canada. They don't sell crap there.

Re:So?

[ces]

http://www.safeway.com/ and http://www.albertsons.com/ offer home delievery in most of the areas they have stores. That would be Amazon's real competition along with other local grocery stores.

Re:So?

[Pink Tinkletini]

I just had to add this little gem from New York magazine, courtesy Wikipedia:

The FreshDirect posters blaring that the company was BROUGHT TO YOU BY A CO-FOUNDER OF FAIRWAY UPTOWN and featuring a photo of Fedele made [Fairway owner Howie] Glickberg furious. He posted signs inside the 74th Street store reading FAIRWAY IS IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH FRESHDIRECT. FreshDirect jabbed back by sending staffers dressed as giant fruits and vegetables to pass out flyers in front of Fairway. Then the FreshDirect Website added a lengthy description of Fedele's role in the uptown Fairway, headlined: HEY FAIRWAY, WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? Fairway threatened to sue.

Yeah! New York!

Re:So?

[BobTheLawyer]

Most UK food retailers have an internet shopping arm, and most of them are profitable. I guess it's the greater population density that makes it economically viable in the UK, but not the US (outside the major cities, anyhow).

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Minneapolis area, I used simondelivers.com and loved it. Fantastic service, fantastic food. It all comes from a couple of central warehouses and they're very prompt and friendly.

In the SF Bay Area I've used Albertson's and Safeway. They ship from individual stores, so if your local store sucks, your service is going to suck. Both charge one price on their website, and if the price changes between when you order it and when your order is stocked and delivered, you pay the second price. (This may have changed, I have not used them in a long time.) They also offer products on their website and don't bother to make sure those products are available in the local store that will actually be shipping the products.

The local Albertson's seems to use delivery as an excuse to get rid of their worst produce. I had a bell pepper (yes, a bell pepper!) go bad the same day it arrived. Otherwise their service is much much better than Safeway's service. They are prompt, friendly, and typically fill the complete order.

The local Safeway can't seem to ever fill an entire order. Don't bother ordering anything in bulk. And by bulk I mean don't order more than two of any one thing. For some reason you can go to the store and stock your cart with 50 of one thing, but they will claim they are out of stock if you try to order that many online. They also can't follow the "no substitutions" option, either. Many times I've received subtitutions like the "fat free" version of whatever I ordered. Yuck. The good news is that customer service will give you your money back and you get to keep whatever was substituted. Customer service doesn't seem to care when more than half your order goes unfulfilled, though. They don't seem to realize how that affects the relative cost of delivery. Nor do they care how that means you'll have to actually go in the store anyway.

Re:So?

[macdaddy]

I believe Dillons does as well. Wal-mart Pharmacies in some areas do deliveries to the eldery as well. My siste did that during college.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

from the fresh directa rticle:

and then called again today, learning that she should have asked the name of the employee before letting him up to deliver the groceries.

freshdirect might as well have said, "we don't care."

they *know* what truck those deliverables went into and they *know* who was driving that truck. if they didn't, what would stop someone from taking 25% of the goods off the truck and saying, "it wasn't loaded on my truck!"?

nothing.

they *know*. they *don't care*.

file this with the state. file their "i don't care" response translated into buresucratese.

then, when one of their guys eventually gets busted for this, there will be a nice long LIABILITY TRAIL and the company can pay millions.

this reminded me of a situation i had with an airlines. my friend booked a ticket and was told $190. he called back to verify some info (he got it wrong the first time) and they told him $210. the $20 phone fee was originally waived.

after going round and round, it was time to settle up. i asked to speak to the original operator who spoke to my friend. he said that information wasn't known. i explained i design and develop databases, and that's one of the FIRST things that goes into the database. imagine a bunch of reservations without any accessibility to the person who took the reservation. anyway, he kept up his routine.

i asked to speak with his manager. he quoted $210. i asked to speak to his manager again. he said $210. i asked if his ignoring my question meant that he was telling me it was impossible to speak to his manager.

after i asked two or three times, he said no and gave the $190 price. ;-)

management teams often don't care until they are forced to care.

Re:So?

[whoop]

What, you don't already live in New York City? WTF is wrong with you?? It solves every problem on Slashdot.

It's a losing battle, bud. These folks will never get that the US is made of more than New York and California.

Re:So?

[whoop]

Safeway is only available in Arizona, California, Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Washington D.C. Six oout of fifty states, but it does get 100% of the districts in the country. Albertsons is available in fourteen cities, five of them major cities in California.

Amazon and UPS deliver to just about every city in the lower 48 states (probably Alaska and Hawaii, but I don't know if they have a higher shipping premium), even ones with populations under a million. You see a difference?

mostly items in bulk

[jwachter]

FYI, if you browse through the store, you'll notice that almost all the items they sell are economy sized or are packaged in multi-packs. If you just want one bottle of detergent, you're out of luck. If you want to save on 6 bottles at a time, this is the place for you.

Jonathan

Re:mostly items in bulk

[tansey]

Finally I can buy a 24 pack of dish detergent AND get free shipping!

Re:mostly items in bulk

[AndrewNeo]

Yeah, but do you really want to pay shipping on a single item? Though, if you use the service a lot, Amazon Prime (if supported) might not be a bad idea.

Re:mostly items in bulk

[Anonymous Coward]

Even without Prime, super saver offers free shipping on orders above $25. I.e. if you were planning to buy something else at the same time anyway...

Re:mostly items in bulk

[AuMatar]

Prime is supported.

Re:mostly items in bulk

[kfg]

FYI, if you browse through the store, you'll notice that almost all the items they sell are economy sized or are packaged in multi-packs.

This is not my issue with them at the moment. I buy "economy sized" food packages, but I also buy economy food.

I do not eat Cocoa Krispies. I do not eat "just add water" precooked and processed Thai rice whatevers.

I eat rice.

I do not eat plastic jar packed ultrapremium brand $4.00/lb rice.

The standard economy sized "pack" of rice is the "20 pound sack," at about $.50/lb. Looks like I'll still be going to the Korean market.

KFG

Re:mostly items in bulk

[aqua]

It's not just supported. The grocery thing is all about Prime. It's a tool to encourage people to buy Prime memberships, and to give members a reason to order and renew.

To understand this sort of thing you have to think about three issues: supply chains, inventory management and fulfillment. They're the three biggest logistical issues in retail. Actually building stores or finding customers or selling them stuff... a bit further down the list. For a big retail company, huge amounts of money are gained or lost based on those three processes, and small changes there have a far bigger effect than anything that goes on in a store. The supply chain is about getting ahold of the stuff you're going to sell. But getting it in just the right amounts, in the right places, at the right times, with the right number of nines in the probability it'll all happen correctly and the right number of zeroes in the dollar penalty if it doesn't. A "bubble" in the supply chain, where a shipment was late, equals lots of lost revenue -- not just in the store, but in the warehousing and all the disruptive ripple effects. It doesn't take much to disrupt a supply line -- a breakdown in a loading dock, a storm that delays a cargo carrier out of China from making port in Oakland or Los Angeles. You can see why big retailers like Target, Walmart or Amazon are so union-hostile; their systems are extremely vulnerable, and the economic impact of a strike has magnified.

Then there's inventory. If you're in the business of selling stuff, inventory is bad. You have to pay for the shelf it's sitting on, you have to keep it from getting wet or dirty (if it's perishable, you have to pay to keep it cold). And it's depreciating every minute it sits on your shelf, representing a paper loss you have to explain to the shareholders. Plus, it's taxable. Remember how smaller shops used to be out of everything around the end of the fiscal year? If you asked the shop keeper, he'd look a little frazzled and mumble "inventory," 'cause he was trying to get rid of as much as possible of it before the IRS made him pay taxes on it. Big retailers don't do that anymore, because they own so little inventory it doesn't hurt them -- and often they don't own the inventory that's on their warehouse or store shelves at all. The shift in power from the manufacturers to the retailers over the last decade or so displaced the tax burden of ownership back to the manufacturers, who in turn shift it backwards to their own supplies or subsidiaries, often in Asian countries that don't tax physical assets. The ideal arrangement from a retailer's point of view would be for the warehouses to have no shelves at all, but simply to be this giant tube through which products were hurled, changing quantities or packaging a little bit in midair, and never touching the floor once before landing in a different truck on the far side of the tube.

And then, fulfillment. For Amazon, that's putting the items in a box and tossing it into the UPS truck. For a big-box retailer it's putting a pallet of them on a truck and driving it to the store. It's a difference of scale made a little earlier on, but fundamentally it's no different. Products need to be physically located near the point of sale (that's the store the customer walks into or the room their web browser was in, whichever) to get it to them cheaply. That's "near" in terms of cost, which is sort of like physical distance but not precisely. The right amounts of inventory (or better, supply chain infeeds) need to be pre-positioned on transit arteries that can reach the stores with the demand or the shipping carriers' local shipping centers as quickly and cheaply as possible. Good highways, good weather, complaint carriers, cheap labor, and union leaders run out of town by a compliant local government eager for the thousands of low-wage jobs you're promising to bring in. Costs to get the product into customer's hands need to be minimized, whether that's with an effective supply system to brick-and-mortar

Re:mostly items in bulk

[Anonymous Coward]

The 50lb sack is a bit cheaper per pound, but damn hard to carry. I sure wouldn't want to pay the UPS delivery charge, that's for sure.

Re:mostly items in bulk

[kfg]

Well, on further digging around it appears that while in the grocery section they only sell gourmet rice, in the gourmet section they sell 50 lb sacks of commodity rice. Go figure.

Fifty bucks, four fifty shipping. Not bad, but not great; and I like poking around the Korean market.

KFG

Re:mostly items in bulk

[CliffSpradlin]

Very fun read.

It's interesting because the first thing I wondered when I looked at the Grocery site was, "Hmm, I wonder if this makes Amazon Prime worth it."

Of course, then I realised that I wouldn't actually be saving anything, since I wouldn't have been 2-day shipping the stuff to me in the first place. But still, I think you're absolutely right about it being a tool for Prime / locking.

-Cliff

Re:mostly items in bulk

[poot_rootbeer]

If you just want one bottle of detergent, you're out of luck. If you want to save on 6 bottles at a time, this is the place for you.

I think it's safe to say, then, that this new initiative of Amazon's does not put them so much in competition with your local supermarkets, but rather with the big-box shopping clubs -- Costco, Sam's Club, et al. For some people it makes sense to by their paper towels an entire pallette at a time, and here we see Amazon catering to those people by offering a better shopping experience than the clubs; they don't need to have a membership, they don't need to lug the stuff home themselves.

Re:mostly items in bulk

[aldheorte]

Fantastic post. Someone who actually did research and tried to figure out the system rather than holding forth with an opinion based on... opinion.

I think you are onto something with Prime encouragement as that's the first thought I had when hearing about this ("Hmm, well, this would work pretty well if I had Prime"). I would be interested to hear from people who do have Prime, but I sort of think that once you had Prime, you would order just about anything you could order from Amazon from Amazon rather than someone else. Sure, you can save a few dollars here and there buying from other vendors, but when you factor in hassle and shipping costs as compared to Prime, you won't be saving very much.

Is this a good thing? Well, I'm generally against monocultures, but, it sounds pretty convenient. The only danger becomes if Amazon uses this to run the competition down and then raise prices. Their pricing as related to the competition essentially raises or lowers the value of your Prime membership, which is already sunk cost to you.

Why a flashback?

[radish]

I've been buying my groceries online for years, and I intend to continue doing so. The food is better quality, there's more choice than my local supermarket and it's way more convenient. In my area right now there are 2 competing online services (that I'm aware of, might be more) so there's even a choice. I'd assumed this kind of service was available everywhere - I guess not.

Re:Why a flashback?

[ClamIAm]

Yes, I can see how canned product Foo is of much better quality when purchased online.

Re:Why a flashback?

[radish]

Who said canned goods? I buy all my groceries online, fresh meat, vegetables, cheese etc. And yes, the selection and quality is better than I get from local stores.

Re:Why a flashback?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Who said canned goods? I buy all my groceries online, fresh meat, vegetables, cheese etc. And yes, the selection and quality is better than I get from local stores.

Good use of technology too, I say. I particularly like the cordless pinpads for using a debit card to pay for it, just like I do at the store.

Savings accrue by having the distribution centres pack and send the food, rather than having to stock supermarket shelves. There are economies of scale in logistics that you won't see in supermarkets (until they allow personal forklifts and automated picking systems into stores, perhaps) that can recover some of the costs of running the web site.

Come to think of it, it's way cheaper to send the stuff out that way than to use the supermarkets. Retailers often strike a deal with the post office, happy to find business now that letter production has dropped off.

The real volume is still the supermarkets though, especially the ones with convenient parking, short walks to the car, and stealable shopping carts.

(Currently employed by a major retailer)

Re:Why a flashback?

[bm_luethke]

Large swatches of the US are not really applicable to this. It needs a high population density to work well. Thus it isn't used - even if available - for much of the country. Chances are, you don't live in someplace that most of your serices are available everywhere (and I say that not knowing where you live because it is true for most places). Gun ranges are ubiquitous here, I don't assume they are everywhere because they are here.

There are some large areas of the US that still do not have some modern services, some that do not have any. I have relatives that live on ancestral farms that have no external electricity or external running water - I can't see online groceries doing well there (though those people have satellite coverage run from house generators - they could actually order stuff online). Broadband coverage is still not everywhere - again our sprawl is to blame, let alone online grocery shopping.

In fact, I would guess that the majority of the US this isn't that great an idea. Unless it is really hard to get your local grocery store is MUCH more efficient and cheaper. Denser areas (such as the UK or New York City) I would guess this to be quite cost effective - probably more so than local shops.

Re:Why a flashback?

[Rifter13]

When we were devloping albertsons.com, the managment figured it was easier/cheaper to fulfill from a working store, rather than a distribution center. The stores were in the neigborhoods, and could pack the product, and have it ready in a short period of time. Distribution centers tend to be more removed from the actual grocery markets, which makes it hard to fulfill from a distrabution center.

Re:Why a flashback?

[radish]

That's how ShopRite work in my area. It's nice in that the local stores keep the business and aren't at risk of being closed down (online shopping is very popular around here) but the downside is that retail employees just aren't trained properly for dealing with online orders and service is patchy. We've had late deliveries, missing items, wrong items, etc. Switching to Fresh Direct who use dedicated distribution centers made a huge difference in the service quality, whilst keeping the food quality and pricing pretty much the same.

Re:Why a flashback?

[radish]

You're right of course, dedicated distribution systems only make sense in dense areas. But the regular distribution methods are available everywhere right? Like USPS, FedEx etc? So the shipping of non-perishable goods should be possible - I guess I'm surprised that Amazon are pioneers in this sense. I think my main surprise was not that these services aren't available everywhere but that whoever wrote and posted this article (and a lot of the commenters) seemed to think they didn't exist anywhere. As you point out, in the UK & Europe, as well as NYC & surroundings - it's both available and popular.

They already sell some food

[Orange Crush]

Amazon already has a gourmet food store. This seems like a logical extension to me.

Re:They already sell some food

[Baddas]

Mmm, pocky

Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[Opportunist]

I mean, ok. When I order a book and find out there's a movie about this book, maybe I order it as well (or the other way 'round). When I order a computer game based on a movie, it makes sense to try to bundle it with the movie (or a "collector's edition" of the DVDs).

Now where does peanut butter come into play? I mean, I somehow CAN see certain porn movies and peanut butter, but it's not really the thing that comes to my mind when I start browsing Amazon. Where's the synergies? When did it happen to you the last time that you wanted to buy a book and realized "Hey, I also need noodles!"?

Books, movies, games, makes sense. Groceries just don't fit into the fold.

Re:Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[Anonymous Coward]

Recipe books make some people think of food. That might be the tie-in.

Re: Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[gidds]

Oh, I dunno.

When was the last time you watched The Buns of Navarone, listened to Give Peas A Chance, read The Da Vinco Cod, or saw Bring Me the Bread of Alfredo Garcia?

Re: Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[badfish99]

I'm sorry, I haven't a clue what you're talking about.

Re:Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[AuMatar]

Amazon isn't just media, and hasn't been for years. Clothes, jewlery, electronics, car parts, etc. They aren't just an online bookstore- think of them as an online department store.

Re:Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[ebuck]

No, that market probably doesn't fit their portfolio. But that's why they're expanding into the online grocery store business. Companies that have the means look for ways to make more money.

In my mind it's the delivery costs that have killed many online grocery stores in our area. Houston is very spread out, and although one of the first online grocery services was launched here, it failed miserably due to delivery issues. Sure, it takes time for people to adjust to a new culture, so the customer's weren't there. Also, at that time only a fraction of the grocery shopping population really had much on-line time, and 90% of that was dial up.

To give an idea of how far changed the online grocery business has become, the service that I'm referring to actually hired people to shop in the grocery store for you, and then drove the groceries to your house. Naturally it failed, being the quintissential example of a poor exeuction of a neat idea.

I believe it was called pea-pod, but it's been too many years.

Re: Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because you're dumb.

Re:Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the synergies?

You are so stuck in the late 90s.

Re:Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[enitime]

Added to shopping cart: William S. Burroughs - The Naked Lunch.

People who bought this also bought:

• Hot Teens Gone Wild VII
• Egg-white omelet with spring onions.

Re:Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[Otto]

Their portfolio is already huge. Electronics, clothing, you name it, they probably sell it.

A lot of what Amazon does nowadays is to act as a broker between the people who want product and the people who have product. All their newer stuff doesn't really involve having large quantities of items on hand, as such.

They have warehouses and they do keep them stocked, but for the most part they've gone over to "just in time" shipping, where the stuff in the warehouse is only there a short time. Predict your future sales and you'll be able to get the stuff in just before you have to ship it out again. It becomes not so much a warehouse as a place to receive goods, package them, and then send trucks of packages over to UPS/Fedex and such.

Re:Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[MagicDude]

The synergy can come from selling pre-grouped meals. Imagin if in one click you can order the "Spaghetti and Meatball Dinner" combo, which comes with a box of spaghetti, jar of sauce, pound of hamburger, mushrooms, onions, loaf of italian bread, bag-o-salad, and italian pastries. So now instead of people doing piecemeal shopping, they're just going "Monday (click), Tuesday (click), Wednesday (click)" etc.

Re: Does that market fit into their portfolio?

[badfish99]

You're obviously not a fan of the show.

What?!? Red states are years behind the times?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same old, same old. Nothing to see here, move along.

If only...

[brian0918]

Now, if only they could find a way to get the food through the computer, and stuff it right into my face, I wouldn't have to do all that damn walking...

Re:If only...

[Skater]

Isn't that what FTP is for? The Food Transfer Protocol?

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Flat items such as tortillas might be faxable.

Re:If only...

[RufusFish]

FTP is already taken. You need CTP: Culinary Transfer Protocol.

Potato Chips

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, because we all know you potato chips can't be easily crushed *cough*
That's I ironic.. my security code is "spoilage", like what perishable food does..

since no perishables

[boredandblogging.com]

it might work out ok. But unless they can cut some serious deals with FedEx/UPS/USPS, shipping and handling for bulk detergent is going to be expensive. Still, its better than having to deal with the smelly and crowded walmarts around here.

Re:since no perishables

[smileyy]

I doubt Amazon has the shipping volume to garner such deals.

Re:since no perishables

[enronman]

Yes, Amazon does. Amazon has their disto centers send items out in two basic ways. 1. The slap a label on it and Fedex/UPS picks it up at their loading gate just like everyone else does. 2. They load a whole or partial truckload of boxes, and send that whole truckload themselves to a regional UPS center. You can get between 1000 and 2000 packages onto a truck which makes the cost for doing this with each package pretty cheap. Much of Amazon's shipping is done this way, which means they only pay for interzone shipping from Fedex/UPS terminal to your house which is very cheap EXPECIALLY with overnight and two day shipping. Option two is what amazon has the scale to do in a BIG way. Go to one of their logistics centers and you'll see that they send out quite a few direct trucks. Doing this allows them to make a profit on basic shipping which they use to defer their free shipping promotions.

Re:since no perishables

[smileyy]

Ah...Ah say that's what we call "a joke" there son...

ohhhh nooooooo

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like before there was some check on how fat the average american can get. you HAD to get off your lazy ass to go to the store.

now..... :*(**

Wow. Slow.....

[SirStanley]

Slashdot!! What's wrong with you!! I've been shopping there all week!

They have the boxes of the Old El Paso Enchillada Mix which I can't find anywhere any more. Whee!!!

Re:Wow. Slow.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd think twice about buying that... Old El Paso are spammers.

plenty in the UK

[mr.e]

In the UK tesco (www.tesco.com) have been doing online groceries for years - as have Ocado.

Re:plenty in the UK

[10bellies]

Iceland, Asda, Sainsburys...the list goes on. This is nothing new in the U.K. and I'm surprised it's not being done in the States.

Re:plenty in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you people just shut the fuck up about how every service that is about overcoming distance already exists in some tiny tiny little country? Yes, if the US was the size of texas, we would have better cell phones, home delivery of everthing and better broadband.

Re:plenty in the UK

[emmadw]

I don't see why the size of the country needs to make a difference ... like others, I was surprised that there aren't as many home shopping services in the US as there are in the UK. Those that work in the UK are based on national supermarket chains, which I'm sure that you have - you just enter your post code & they tell you if they deliver to your area. Then you can join. I'd have thought that there are chains with a big enough coverage area to make it worth while ...

Re:plenty in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

It is. Has been for years. The editors are just retards.

Re:plenty in the UK

[ByteofK]

But we thought the US was so great and the US invented the internet and the US this and the US that. Are you telling me the US is not so great now?

It doesn't matter how big the country is. There are plenty of stores here. It just needs someone from a single major retailer to admit that people only want to buy what they NEED, and not what gets placed at the end-caps, checkout lanes, and on falsely labeled sale shelves.

Re:plenty in the UK

[ces]

It is being done in the states. Like the UK big grocery chains US chains such as Albertson's (#2 US grocery retailer) and Safeway (different company from the UK Safeway) (#3 US grocery retailer) have been offering online shopping and home delievery for a while now.

However it does seem that few actually use this service. Probably the 2 biggest customers in this area are businesses ordering for employee snacks and people living downtown who don't own cars.

Re:plenty in the UK

[ces]

National supermarket chains are offering home shopping services they just don't promote them heavily.

Albertson's (#2 US) and Safeway (#3 US) have offered online shopping and home delievery in many of the metro areas they operate in for years now.

In addition one of the remaining "buy groceries online" companies (Peapod.com) is now owned by Royal Ahold who also owns the Giant supermarket chain. When they took over Peapod they cut it back to markets they already served in the US and made is essentially the home delievery arm of their stores.

Re:plenty in the UK

[ByteofK]

And just to explain why it *can* and does work: If you order from Tescos and you live in Birmingham, you get the groceries delivered to you from your nearest store in Birmingham - or at least the one in your region that does deliveries. So if you order from Walmart it is your local one that delivers, not the head office in Arkansas or the distribution centre 100 miles away. So distances are irrelevant to the issue. One store covers a radius which may include many other stores but is still able to manage a local distribution of perishable items.

Re:plenty in the UK

[fishbowl]

The big grocery stores appear to have gotten the idea from food co-ops, who have been doing this kind of order/delivery service forever. Plug into the co-op (e.g., with labor) and get your groceries at cost. My local co-op even does certain kinds of perishables. It was a good deal for a church soup kitchen, but it doesn't really do much for my 2-person family.

Re:plenty in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

i think ocado is partly owned by amazon (Watroses owns about 40%)

Re:plenty in the UK

[Aptiva]

We don't have online groceries in Iceland (as far as I know anyway)

Makes sense with their other infrastructure, too

[iabervon]

Amazon already also has partnerships where they set up transactions with other businesses (e.g., their whole used-book system). In some places (e.g., Boston) grocery chains are still doing online orders and deliveries. (It has a reasonable ROI if you already have the food storage; delivery people and a web site to get the segment of the market that just wants food to show up.) So the next step is for Amazon, after you've specified your location, to offer fresh food if they've got a partner in the area. I don't see it leading to a loss for either business, relative to the status quo, so it's a perfectly plausible move.

Where's the booze?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me when you can get alcohol online from amazon.com. Even http://wine.woot.com/ and http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=bacardi&btnG=S earch+Froogle can get me wasted!

Re:Where's the booze?

[mj_sklar]

In Montréal, Québec, IGA does online orders and delivery (for only $6 Canadian shipping/handling, too!) with just about everything they carry. That includes fresh meat, fish, veggies, fruits, breads, and yes, beers and wines too. They used to sell cigarettes too, but due to a new law in Quebéc (or just Montréal, I'm not sure, I don't follow politics much), they had to stop.

So yes, some places CAN get booze delivered straight to your door! Heck, even the government-run liquor store does online orders and deliveries here!

What services do you use?

[sTalking_Goat]

I've always been curious but never given it a try. I work swing shift so I'm out of work too late to hit the grocery most days.

Re:What services do you use?

[Belgand]

Really? In recent years just about every grocery store I've been to is 24 hours.

Re:What services do you use?

[lmpeters]

That would depend to a great extent on where you live. I live in a part of the northern San Fransisco Bay Area that's too sparsely populated for it to be profitable for a grocery store to stay open 24 hours.

Getting back on topic, if someone comes up with an online grocery store where I can get the same level of fresh produce as I can find at my local farmer's market, then I'll be interested.

Re:What services do you use?

[radish]

In the US, FreshDirect.com are great so if you're in an area they serve try them. Otherwise, ShopRite supermarkets (tri-state area) deliver and most accept orders online. In the UK I used to use Ocado (linked to Waitrose) which was excellent, I've also used Tesco online which was fine as well. I've really had very few really bad experiences with any of the services I've used over the years.

Re:What services do you use?

[Belgand]

It also depends a lot on the local chains you're dealing with. Pretty much every Super Wal-Mart is 24 hours as are all of the Dillon's (Kroger) that I've been to. Sure neither is particularly good, but sometimes it's all that's available.

Why the flashback

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK, online grosary shopping is very common, with all the major supermarket's doing home delivary. Just take a look at http://www.tesco.com/ or http://www.sainsburystoyou.com/ although the fact that it's amozon that is creating the store is kind of freaky. I mean its not like they have a *food* distubution network to start with - food goes off, books don't...

Correlation between Reading habits & Eating ha

[WinEveryGame]

Hmm.. I wonder what they will deduce from correlating my reading habits with my eating habits.

Bulk goods == expensive shipping

[cperciva]

I really don't think this makes sense.

If there's one type of goods which I would like to order online and have delivered to my door, it is bulk goods. A box of 12 1L cartons of orange juice; a dozen 2L bottles of diet coke; a 4 kg box of laundry detergent. These can sit on my shelves for months, but they're bulky, heavy, and generally annoying to handle. I'm doubt I'll ever buy tonight's dinner from an online grocery store, but I would be very happy to buy next month's laundry detergent.

Unfortunately, the very nature of these goods which makes me want to order them online and have them delivered makes them impractical for a company like Amazon to handle. Products like this tend to be are at the very low end of the $/kg scale; they are exactly the sort of products which need to be shipped in large quantities to local warehouses and then delivered locally -- not packaged into individual deliveries at a central warehouse and then shipped separately halfway across the country.

The reason an online bookstore works so well is that the book market is characterized by low turnover, high profit margins, and high $/kg ratios. Grocery stores have high turnover, low profit margins, and low $/kg ratios. Trying to apply a solution designed for bookstores to the grocery store area simply won't work.

Re:Bulk goods == expensive shipping

[pen]

Have you actually looked at the store? Most of the items are being sold in bulk sizes and quantities.

Re:Bulk goods == expensive shipping

[cperciva]

That's my point: They've figured out what their customers want, but it doesn't look like they've stopped to ask themselves if they can actually make a profit once the shipping costs of these goods are taken into consideration.

Re:Bulk goods == expensive shipping

[kfg]

Most of the items are being sold in bulk sizes and quantities.

Yes, but at a profit margin of only a few cents a pound. Grocers only make money because they move a lot of goods.

Will UPS haul this shit for a penny a pound?

KFG

Re:Bulk goods == expensive shipping

[SydShamino]

Yeah, this is like pets.com's brilliant marketing strategy -

"Let's make a business of selling 50-lb bags of dog food with free shipping. While we lose money on each sale, by spending $25 million on Super Bowl advertising we can make back our losses on volume."

Re:Bulk goods == expensive shipping

[Otto]

Yeah. Let's find out. I just ordered a book and 20 rolls of toilet paper. With free shipping, it says it'll be here in about 10 days. I hope my current stock hold out that long. For that matter, I hope the TP arrives before the book, or I may be forced into drastic measures.

On a more serious note, UPS just recently announced another billion dollar addition to their Louisville facility. I wonder if these facts are loosely related...

Re:Bulk goods == expensive shipping

[GWBasic]

Actually, this is great for people like me who keep a shopping list of such items. I stick items like soap, shaving cream, and soda on my list well in advance of running out. All they need to do is provide me with an online shopping list that is automatically shipped every other week, (or sooner for a small fee.)

uhmm...lets think about this for a second...

[scheuri]

"This item is not on stock, it will be delivered within 14 days to your home"
or
"This item is on Stock. Delivery will take 5 days to you"
or
"New at Amazone Grocery! The talking Meat by Bestseller Author Dan Brown! Coming out next month"

oh well, this is going to be funny...:)

Re:uhmm...lets think about this for a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

"New at Amazone Grocery! The talking Meat by Bestseller Author Dan Brown! Coming out next month"


I thought that Terry Bisson was the author. http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html/

Meanwhile, in the UK

[BristolCream]

...every major super market offers an online grocery service. I have five available in my area. They're fast (next day, some same day), accurate and cheap; £5 for delivery last time I checked. Some even bringin the shopping and put it away for you.

Re:Meanwhile, in the UK

[10bellies]

If you go to somewhere like http://hotukdeals.com/, there's usually vouchers for free delivery. I don't know why more people don't get stuff delivered.

Re:Meanwhile, in the UK

[Gibsnag]

I'm glad someone posted this. I was just about to.

It seems that its a good way of reducing car use as well as being incredibly convenient, instead of having loads of mums (and a few dads) driving to and from Tesco/Sainsburys/etc... every week, just have a few delivery vans that cover a relatively large area. I'm personally surprised that this doesn't already happen in every U.S city, not just New York.

OT: Threaded Fasteners

[stephenMF]

I recently noticed that they are now selling threaded fasteners, including machine screws. I don't understand their approach. I guess someone in their marketing department decided they could sell weird stuff. Even if amazon is cheaper, I will probably still use McMaster-Carr for this type of thing as their selection/search system is *much* more refined.

Great selection!

[paleblue]

They have all the things I've been wanting which haven't been available at the corner store: sushi rice, nori, and Bengal Spice tea. I think Amazon Grocery and I are going to be good friends.

a terrible idea

[Aeron65432]

This is a terrible idea, not because of the groceries, but because of the limitations on it.

Who really wants to shop for 1/2 their groceries online, and the perishables in the store?

Re:a terrible idea

[cpsc2005]

Also, who really wants used peanut butter? I don't want my food in the condition of "Used - Good."

Harry Potter reference link (Sorry, it was the first thing that popped into my head for which to search)

Re:a terrible idea

[paleblue]

As a poor college student without a car, this sounds like a great idea. I can stock up on non-perishables at a discount and have USPS deliver them to my door. Then, I can walk down to the corner store (three corners away) and buy my eggs and milk and carry them back. Saves me money and reduces the amount of stuff I need to carry back from the store.

Re:a terrible idea

[vidarh]

People who want to stock up on large amounts of the non-perishable stuff once a month or so and buy only the perishables whenever they drop by the store. I could see this doing much better in Europe where lots of people don't drive/don't want to drive/use public transport and drop by the store on foot on the way too/from work without a car for instance. I do almost all my shopping on foot, and ordering non-perishables in bulk might be tempting. I already have the option, though, as all the major chains in the UK offers delivery.

Re:a terrible idea

[loraksus]

If you live in the city and don't have a car, getting the big bulky stuff home is a pain in the ass. When I lived at PSU, I often biked down to the safeway to pick up fresh meat and veggies and did the "buy bulk stuff all at once" every month or so in my car. Having a car there was a bit of a pain in the ass because the meter maids constantly issued fraudulent tickets, etc. Could see this as being a kick ass thing for college students - especially is amazon prime covers it. Besides - most college students eat mainly non perishable food.

Perishables???

[Wellington Grey]

Amazon is only attempting this with nonperishables like peanut butter, potato chips, and canned soup

What other kind of food is there? I know not of this 'perishable' food.

-Grey

Re:Perishables???

[__aaclcg7560]

You should try the mold in the bathroom. That's perishable. Especially when I'm cleaning the bathroom.

Re:Perishables???

[mikerm19]

You should check out dictionary.com then. perishable Audio pronunciation of "perishable" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-sh-bl) adj. Subject to decay, spoilage, or destruction. n. Something, especially foodstuff, subject to decay or spoilage. Often used in the plural. So, that would mean frozen/cold stuff.

Re:Perishables???

[Anonymous Coward]

That stuff isn't perishable! You leave it alone and it multiplies!

Wow, neverending food source, wonder why I never thought of it that way before.

Re:Correlation between Reading habits & Eating

[__aaclcg7560]

Finally, Romulan Ale home delivered!

I'll go out on a limb....

[boredandblogging.com]

and say that $20 of bulk anything (imagine canned soup or detergent) weighs a lot more than $20 of books. The free shipping deal on groceries is nice, but I wonder how much of it is amazon just sucking it up till it seriously gets off the ground.

Peapod.com

[uncadonna]

Peapod is still going strong in Chicago, perishables and all, and they seem to be in other markets as well. mt

Re:Peapod.com

[PhoenixFlare]

Peapod is alive and well here in DC/Northern Virginia as well, they partner with the Giant stores in the area. Used them a few times since I moved here....Aside from forgetting an item once, they've been pretty decent.

That said, even though they deliver perishables, I wouldn't use them for produce or any non-ground meat.

Albertsons.com

[Kagami001]

Just to add another to the list of people saying "Flashback? Huh?" I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas, U.S.A. and order all my groceries from Albertsons.com, perishables included. They deliver in refrigerated trucks.

Still, even without refrigerated local delivery, there've been places shipping non-perishable food items for a while now. Just google for "groceries."

Click and Motor

[Doc Ruby]

Fresh Direct is popular, and apparently successful, in densely populated neighborhoods like mine in NYC. Even though there are grocery stores sync'ed to the local neighborhood within a few walking blocks, all over the city.

Some competition from Amazon might force down the prices, and produce some new innovations for better service. And it will double the number of doubleparked giant delivery trucks clogging previously residential-only streets that rarely took deliveries.

These delivery services should deliver only after 8PM, when people are at home, and traffic congestion is lighter, and the double/parking has settled down. Getting that setup for residential zones would help make it more obviously better in commercial and mixed zones. Eventually we can have deliveries only between 8PM-6AM, and use the full capacity of our roads, even increasing it by lowering wasteful congestion.

A great combination of efficiency and convenience, at every level.

Re:Click and Motor

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to be the guy who gets the 3:45 AM peanut butter delivery!

Farkism: Somehow I don't think you thought your genius plan all the way through...

Re:Click and Motor

[Doc Ruby]

Stores paying NYC rents 24/7 don't need to pay the more expensive day workers to process deliveries, including peanut butter. They get more out of their rent and salaries by taking deliveries when the stores are closed to customers and empty.

It's obvious you haven't thought your farking criticism all the way through.

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been ordering food (including frozen stuff) from amazon for like 2 years. Ok so it's usually companies that work with amazon and not amazon itself but its still the same thing on the customer side of things

Metro's Seem to Have This

[JudasBlue]

In the SF Bay Area, Safeway and Albersons already offer full online shopping to the door, ala webvan and have been for a little while now. Like a lot of web ideas that died during the Crash, but are doing fine now and just needed some time to get the model right and more penetration, this seems like a pretty obvious/good idea. The earlier guy was talking about NYC having similiar services.

I suspect that this is something that makes a lot more sense on a metro by metro basis, hooked into existing stores just as an added service, instead of a nationwide thing. Only non-perishables, like amazon, seems kinda annoying and limited unless there are deep discounts. I would rather pay a few pennies more to not have to order my groceries repeatedly. But maybe that's just me.

*sigh*

[vertinox]

If they'd only do this for beer, wine, and liquor.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I order my beer online from http://www.blackislebrewery.com/ - get a mixed crate of excellent beer (I don't drink much so prefer to pay a premium for quality rather than quantity) delivered in a few days. ..d

Re:*sigh*

[Danga]

I live in the Chicago area and get all of my groceries delivered using peapod.com. I was a little worried about ordering perishables but I have no complaints after using them 5 times so far. They also deliver alcoholic beverages, their liqour selection isn't huge but they do have a decent selection of beer.

Re:*sigh*

[DarkFyre]

wine.com - an Amazon partner.

No Mountain Dew

[DavidD_CA]

We should all boycott this new venture. They do not sell Mountain Dew!

Re:No Mountain Dew

[AndreiK]

Nor any kind of soda, really. If they offered free delivery on 25 dollars or more, and offered 12-packs for around 3 dollars, I'd be wasting half of my paycheck there every month.

Re:No Mountain Dew

[lou2ser]

What are you talking about?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0004MUE1Y/qid=11 50667571

Re:No Mountain Dew

[DavidD_CA]

Well okay, they have the 2L bottles for $0.99... however, that is through a 3rd party seller which means you're going to pay shipping, even if you exceed the $25 Free Shipping deal through Amazon. You might also have to pay tax, too.

But like another guy said, I would very much like it if I could order MD through here.. in cans or 24 oz bottles... even if I had to order a case at a time it would probably be cheaper than the local grocery store.

Most UK supermarkets have done this for years

[Tim C]

The main difference being, of course, that they're already in the grocery business, and so have no problems with perishables. In fact, I ordered my groceries online from Tesco earlier; it's so much quicker and more convenient than actually going there. Of course, you have no control over the quality of the fresh items that are picked (although I generally have no complaints). Also, if they don't have something you ordered they'll substitute something similar, which isn't necessarily to your taste. You're entitled (expected, really) to refuse anything you don't want though if that does happen.

There's a charge for the service, of course (about 5 pounds), but it saves so much time and hassle it's generally worth it (not to mention that it massively cuts down on the temptation to impulse buy).

Re:Most UK supermarkets have done this for years

[Anonymous Coward]

it massively cuts down on the temptation to impulse buy

It doesn't stop my wife. The Special Offers section on tesco.com is always her first port of call.

What happens if there is a delay?

[beoswulf]

I could starve if my food gets back ordered. Especially if I finished up that 64 pack of Pringles I got last time.

Re:What happens if there is a delay?

[iggymanz]

hope you washed those down with diet soda, then it's ok

Where this may do well

[Roginator]

Bush villages in Alaska where the USPS already delivers at subsidized rates. Anyplace that's not near a large grocery store. I live less than a mile from Safeway and Costco -- so it won't impact me much unless I want to buy a case of Lucky Charms (they're magically delicious!) and Costco has those lame multipacs with 2 other cereals included.

How is this going to work

[Anonymous Coward]

I can buy a 2lb jar of peanut butter from Costco for $5.00. Minimum Canada Post parcel rate for that same jar of peanut butter is $5.50 - without looking it up, UPS would normally be about 2x that and FedEx about 10x that. Unless UPS actually pays Amazon to deliver stuff or they are using a completely different business model, I can't see how they plan to compete.

Re:How is this going to work

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is shipping directly from a major warehouse or even the supplier/manufacturer. Costco may be like a warehouse, but it still isn't completely. I would think that UPS gives amazon a special rate and that rate combined with the decreased overhead otherwise may be competitive.

Canada Post? Unless amazon.ca is offering something like this, I would think that amazon.com is targeting the US primarily. Shipping to Canada will be unrealistic for most items for most people.

Not everybody lives near a Costco. Indeed, not everybody lives near a supermarket. And prices vary substantially. For example, to my knowledge, in 2003, Dominion in St. John's, NL would often typically charge >= 1CAD for a tin of chunk light tuna whereas No Frills in Mississauga, ON would often typically charge 0.35CAD or thereabouts for the exact same product. To my knowledge, they are both owned by the same parent company. It was theoretically possible to cover the cost of a return flight from St. John's, NL to Mississauga, ON on the savings of canned tuna alone. And this is one person flying!!!

Pushed by Google?

[ikejam]

I can't help think that they've been pretty much forced to expand their services while they can.

Even now, if I were to buy a book, I'll just google it and find the amazon link from there. Thats advertisement expense that Amazon is losing right there - more importantly Amazon has stopped being my first resort for book searches though majority of my purchases might be still from there. Amazon would probably want to gain that "first site you go to" share. And if they stick arnd with just books, whereas google offers everything (including Amazon links - which obviously they cant afford to take out), they might start to lose a bit of relevence. And obviously google's plan to scan the worlds books is a very visible threat.

Re:Pushed by Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon.com doesn't really care. If you buy from they, they are happy. They don't really have a big ad budget, relying on weblinks, word of mouth, and occasionally, a rare TV ad, or print insert. Otherwise, they get free advertising in newspapers, especially when they print book reviews....

"Dan browns New Book, the Davinci Toad, just hit #1 in sales on Amazon.com..."

And Amazon is offering more and more electronic content. While google is fighting with publishers, and still trying to hash out how to offer access to non-public-domain works, you can currently 'upgrade' a lot of books you buy on Amazon.com to a PDF version for a very low price. And as amazon.com stores that book for you, it's available from anywhere you can access the web from."

Now if only they offered pure electronic versions. This would be win-win, the publishers wouldn't have to pay for paper, printing, and transport costs, and amazon wouldn't have to pay for storage, shipping either. I expect it's probably a year out before the publishers feel comfortable with the idea.

This grocery service isn't necessarily intended to compete with Peapod. It's just another service. Of course, Amazon may offer things others don't, like Nori and Sushi rice.

And yes, you can probably expect 'reccomendations' for foods in the near future...

"People who bought sushi rice also bought 'making sushi for Dummies'".

BTW, they're hiring too.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/102-1490223-5 715325?node=14201851

Re:Pushed by Google?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

And if they stick arnd with just books, whereas google offers everything (including Amazon links - which obviously they cant afford to take out), they might start to lose a bit of relevence. And obviously google's plan to scan the worlds books is a very visible threat.

I suggest you go look at Amazon - they sell quite a large variety of stuff. Books, Video, Sporting goods, clothing, gems, electronics, Badonkadonk, cosmetics, watches - you name it. The one thing they seem to shy away from are things that require special handling, like firearms. The do have bullet knives, though.

Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[reporter]

There is a fundamental difference between Amazon and Safeway, and you can see the difference at the checkout lane at Safeway. Each cashier booth is equipped with a bottle of disinfectant lotion. When the cashier blows her runny rose in a handkerchief, she immediately applies the disinfectant lotion before resuming the handling of the customer's items of food. Safeway regulations require her to do so.

Amazon, being a general-merchandise store like Target, does not employ such sanitary procedures. The Amazon employees packing the non-perishable foods (for shipment to the customer) could very well have just used the toilet without washing hands before resuming the handling of the customer's items of food. These observations also apply to Walmart and other general-merchandise stores.

If you buy food, buy food from stores that specialize in selling food.

I buy stuff from Amazon and Target often, but I never buy food from those stores.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[bigbigbison]

All the stuff that Amazon and (to the best of my knowledge) target sell is prepackaged, isn't it? So even if there are germs all over the boxes, it doesn't do anything to the actual food, does it?
Even if cashiers at grocery stores use disinfectant regularly, there still isn't any guarantee a customer didn't take that food item and get flu germs or worse all over it. I'd be a lot more concerned with what other customers might have done to food than the people working there.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[kfg]

Dude, if they're touching my peanut butter there is a bigger problem than their failure to wash their hands first.

Nevermind that the behavior of the cashier is essentially for show. If you want to know how "sanitary" your food from Safeway is go at 3 in the morning and watch the shelf stockers.

And of course other customers never touch your food before you buy it, no siree Bob! You might want to start considering your sanitation concerns being, by their very nature, your problem to look after. If you're afraid of catching something from your peanut butter jar wear gloves when you shop and wipe everything down with Vodka before you take them off.

KFG

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Amazon employees packing the non-perishable foods (for shipment to the customer) could very well have just used the toilet without washing hands before resuming the handling of the customer's items of food."

Let's just hope they are Linux users ;-)

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[Profane MuthaFucka]

That's not a bug, it's a feature. Amazon is merely saving me the trouble of wiping my ass with my hand and then touching my food. Currently, I spend a significant chunk of each day doing that.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[ygslash]

...you can see the difference at the checkout lane at Safeway. Each cashier booth is equipped with a bottle of disinfectant lotion. When the cashier blows her runny rose in a handkerchief, she immediately applies the disinfectant lotion before resuming the handling of the customer's items of food.

That is a nice gimmick.

Have you ever spent any time in the backroom of a supermarket, or a warehouse, or a food manufacturing plant? Obviously not, if you think that it makes any difference whether the cashiers use those wipes.

There is no advantage whatsoever to Safeway over Amazon in this regard.

And please remember to wash off any food container before you open it, wherever you bought it.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[topham]

great, so that's another source of super-bacteria.

seriously, that type of attitude is a contributor to the problem.

When someone who is NOT sick sneezes, etc the risk of any type of infection spreading is nil. Now there is always the chance someone has something but doesn't know it, and hence it is prudent to take others into consideration. But this attitude of using disinfectants and antibiotic soaps, etc make things worse, not better when they are misapplied.

Me I think companies should do a better job of convincing people who are sick to STAY HOME. I don't care what environment they are in, even if they suppress most of the symptoms they are the ones spreading it to others.

Someone who is sick should NOT be serving the public.

But, if you're overly sensitive, trust me, you don't want to actually know what's in your food.

really.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[Frosty Piss]

And, drive down the farm roads in California, and tell me how many Port-O-Lets you see? Think Jose tucks over to one every time he needs to take a leak? Not.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[forty7]

When someone who is NOT sick sneezes, etc the risk of any type of infection spreading is nil. Now there is always the chance someone has something but doesn't know it, and hence it is prudent to take others into consideration. But this attitude of using disinfectants and antibiotic soaps, etc make things worse, not better when they are misapplied.
If you're that concerned about antibacterials, perhaps you should stop brushing your teeth? (Many toothpastes contain triclosan, the same antibacterial agent found in most antibacterial hand soaps).

Antibacterial != Antibiotic, even though they perform much the same function. Most antibacterial soaps and lotions are made with either triclosan or ethanol; neither has any link to increased bacterial resistance. In fact, there are no fewer than seven peer-reviewed studies indicating that triclosan is not significantly associated with bacterial resistance (cf. Wikipedia).

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

wear gloves when you shop and wipe everything down with Vodka before you take them off.

Funny, my last girlfriend said the same thing to me...

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[pipingguy]

That would be a waste of Vodka.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[topham]

There are a few hospitals in Quebec you should inform of this, as they have been trying for several years to get rid of a high-level of bacteria in the hospitals.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[Ohreally_factor]

You stuck your penis in my peanut butter!

You got peanut butter on my penis!

Somehow, I don't think Reese's Penis Butter Cups are ever going to be a big hit.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[kfg]

Just exactly how long have you been sitting around just waiting for a chance to use that one?

KFG

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[zolaris]

I'd recomend not comparing it to Safeway:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10976595/?page=2 [msnbc.com]

Daateline did an article on the number of health violations found at Supermarkets across the US. I am anticiapting a similar thing to be done with Amazon when/if they pull this off, but if it's just for pre-packaged goods that sit in a warehouse anyway before they get to the shelves of the local grocery store I don't see much of a difference. I do wonder how Amazon would stack up in this kind of test. Many of the categories such as freezer and refrigeration temperatures may not apply so they might actually do quite well.

FTA:
Dateline Supermarket Sweeps
Store Chain Average number of violations per 10 inspections
Safeway 25
Albertsons 24
Publix 22
Kroger 17
Winn-Dixie 14
Sam's Club 12
Costco 12
Wal-Mart 9
Save-A-Lot 9
Food Lion 8

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[trailerparkcassanova]

The checker just happens to be the only one you saw handle the food. Many others handled it before.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[Rifter13]

It is funny how you say sick people should stay at home. My wife works for one of the major grocery chains in the nation (Not safeway), and in their contracts, they have to be away from work for like 3 days, before they can start taking sick days... so people RARELY take sick days. On top of that, I believe that recently, they took away all of their sick leave, completely. So, once again, sick checkers, bag boys, stockers, etc... come to work sick, to get the paycheck, instead of staying home, and getting well.

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[soft_guy]

You are a maroon. The cashier handles MONEY which is totally filthy - and you are happy because she uses disinfectant after blowing her nose?

Re:Difference between Amazon & Safeway

[zen-theorist]

But, if you're overly sensitive, trust me, you don't want to actually know what's in your food.

whoa, i wonder who's being overly sensitive here. suck it up and lap it up, your immune system will get a shot in the arm at the least.

More Creative Delivery Options

[brotherash]

I wonder if this isn't common across most of Europe. It is at least in Spain.

In addition to internet ordering the major grocery chains in Spain (two of the largest are actually French and German owned) offer other creative options. I for example found I didn't particularly like shopping for groceries online. There were too many things I wanted to see and select in person: fresh fruit and vegetables, meats, cheeses, etc. But I also found I didn't like lugging my groceries home on public transit so I would shop in the store and then have my groceries wheeled back into large coolers to be delivered either same or next day.

Why does this work so well in Europe but seem so rare in the States? It could be because of a significant difference in population density. These sorts of services seem to work well in densely populated areas where cars are less available (or desirable) than in more rural settings. The US has historically had a very disparate population living in primarily rural settings. This seems to be changing as small towns are shrinking as cities grow.

And the others...

[williamhb]

Not to mention tesco.com and ocado.com in the UK (Very successful national online grocery stores run by ... two of the UK's biggest grocery store chains), and the many online organic food delivery box companies running in the UK. Honestly, guys, if "online groceries" gives you flashbacks to 2000 then you are about six years behind the times...

Re:And the others...

[JulesLt]

I would have mentioned the same (most of the major UK supermarkets do delivery) but the US is a very different market, as brought home to me by someone telling me how their nearest Walmart / major town was . . . 50 miles away. What makes the model work so well in the UK is that most of the population live close to an urban centre.

Amazon also love the UK for that - apparently we're one of their best markets because most things get delivered next day.

Re:And the others...

[vidarh]

The "our population is too spread out for that" argument that people tend to throw around about the US whenever something like this (or the lack of public transport) is brought up is bullshit.

According to the US Census Bureau, about 222 million people in the US lived in urbanized areas, meaning more than 2/3's of the population, and a market 2.5 times larger than any single European country (Germany is at about 80 million people).

The US' 50 largest cities alone make up a larger market than most European countries.

Re:And the others...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you mention 'bullshit'... Penn and Teller pointed out a few weeks ago that numbers don't lie. The people manipulating them do. Those numbers don't mean what you they think they do.

Urban areas here sprawl on endlessly, hence the term 'urban sprawl'. The zoning laws for most cities were designed around the advent of the automobile and resulted in cities that are layed out in a fashion that makes public transport impractical at best. If every person in the US lived in an urban area, that still would not solve the sprawl problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl

Re:And the others...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably because the US is a lot larger then European countries. Most towns and city's in the UK are no more than a few miles apart which makes it a lot easier for goods to be transported.

Re:Correlation between Reading habits & Eating

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.. I wonder what they will deduce from correlating my reading habits with my eating habits.

Yes. The alogrithm will base your food preferences on the books you buy. For example, if you order programming books, a suggested purchase for food would be would be "Jolt Cola, Potato Chips, Coffee and Ring Dings".

It's an experiment -- nothing more

[PeeAitchPee]

These types of goods are commoditized to the point that no one -- not even Amazon -- will be able to gain significantly better economies of scale than are already present. The margins are just too thin. As others have mentioned, Amazon is already at a disadvantage because of the shipping.

Most of the traditional grocers gave up on trying to compete with Wal-Mart on price long ago and are looking for new ways to differentiate the customer's shopping experience instead. Been in a Wegmans, Whole Foods, or one of the new A & P "Fresh" format stores (A & P Fresh, Waldbaums Fresh etc.)? It's all about ultra-impressive super-clean 100K+ sq. ft. stores, organic foods, in-store cafes, etc. coupled with a progressive (for retailers anyway) use of technology. With many traditional low-end grocers going under, selling off large numbers of stores or re-orging (Winn-Dixie, Food Lion, etc.), the rest are content to let Wal-Mart have the low-income demographic and aim squarely at capturing upper-middle class and above shoppers' dollars. These shoppers have proven that they're willing to pay a bit more for a high-quality shopping experience. Amazon's approach will add some more content to their own store (the ultra-important "long tail") but will have little effect on the grocery biz.

Disclaimer: I work for a retail software vendor.

Does anyone know if..

[Frightening]

you could post reviews for your groceries? Because if yes, we can and will annihilate the TV dinner business.

Did a google and it has already been done!

[transporter]

Damn, I did a google and found the following:

After analyzing the data, Amazon.com has determined that WinEveryGame (978424), lives in his parents basement, has no girlfriend, prefers books about game cheats, and lives on a diet of junk food and caffeine.

Is that scary or what?

Transporter

Re:Did a google and it has already been done!

[WinEveryGame]

LOL! Scary. But googling also found the following:

After analyzing the data, Amazon.com has determined that transporter (733324) primarily lives on Cheetos & Vitamin tablets and finds no time for reading books (spends all his time posting funnies on slashdot)

Used & New

[pajamacore]

I'm okay with this idea so long as there isn't a Used & New grocery section, like for the other items they sell.

Re:Used & New

[coolGuyZak]

Yeh, their current used section is shitty enough.

*Zing*

Re:Used & New

[mkw87]

Could you imagine, it would be like the main city in an MMO.

WTS HALF eAtEn jAr OF PB - 500gp wHiSper!!1one

Re:Correlation between Reading habits & Eating

[edwardpickman]

Hmm.. I wonder what they will deduce from correlating my reading habits with my eating habits.

Either that you're a twelve year old boy or a Catholic Priest.

Price Check on Isle Amazon

[kurtis25]

I did a quick and dirty price comparison with my weekly Kroger add + coupons and found Amazon to be more expensive. That is also to say that Sams Club, Costco, and other bulk places are more expensive because you cannot use a coupon. I must include I'm the type to shop where my $.5 coupons double so coupons are worth a lot. If I could use my $.50 (doubles to a 1.00) off 6 boxes of Mac and cheese on a bulk 24 pack of Mac and Cheese 4 times over ( I save 4 dollars on 24 packs which make it 16.90 on Amazon) I would shop bulk but right now it's less cost efficient.

Re:Price Check on Isle Amazon

[pdxmac]

I did a simpler comparison yesterday between Amazon's prices on laundry detergents, fabric softener, and dishwashing soap vs. Target's prices on the same items.

Specifically, I checked the prices on All ultra-concentrated liquid laundry detergent, Method's ultra-concentrated liquid laundry detergent, Method liquid fabric softener, and Method dishwashing detergent cubes.

I compared the non-sale Target prices with Amazon's prices, and Target's prices were cheaper. Any sales or coupon usage would increase the price differential.

Schwan's

[gabrielwalker]

I guess it's because I live in a rural area, but I've noticed -no one- here seems to mention Schwan's when this sort of thing comes up. They've been in my area for as long as I can remember, and while they don't deliver fresh foods, they do deliver an assortment of groceries. You can order online, over the phone, through a catalog... or if you get lucky and the truck just up and stops by. They come on a fairly regular schedule once you've opened an account with them -- so they can visit, say, once a month. But as an example, you can get frozen meat, pre-packaged dinners, dessert, Ice cream, bread, vegetables, pizza. Depending on your area, sometimes you can get eggs, milk and butter. Now, I can't remember seeing a lot of potato chips, cereal, or peanut butter... but maybe that's for the better.

Re:Schwan's

[Secrity]

I used to get groceries from Schwan's until they screwed me. When I did business with thm all they sold were frozen items and huge boxes of laundry detergent. The Schwan's truck was frozen food box on the back with lots of small doors. Schwan's frozen prepared foods were good, but I thought that they were very expensive. I stopped using them because theey raised prices without notice. Food was orderd a week in advance by filling out an order form and giving to the driver, I filled out the order form which showed the current prices and when they delivered it, I was charged the new prices which were higher than on the previoss week's order form. The driver refused to even listen to me, he just kept telling me that these are the new prices. I called the main office, they said that the order forms says that prices may change without notice.

non perishables?

[Anonymous Coward]

We had a delivery of a computer monitor by UPS once. I heard the truck pull up and I walked out the door to greet the delivery person, just in time to see him drop the monitor box out the back of his truck onto our cement driveway; a two foot drop with a nice "thud".

I find that anything delivered by UPS can be "perishable".

International customers

[PrayingWolf]

This will really broaden the horizons for someone living in, say, Elbonia.

Also, they should start bundling foodstuffs with books and movies... the piece of steak that Robin Hood ate, the chocolate bar that was eaten in "hunt for Red October". That would really get you into the mood :)

Re:International customers

[Gromius]

Bundling fava beans with the "Silence of the Lambs" might not be an amazingly good idea though...

Especially with a nice bottle of chianti.

History of the US vs UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you'll find that many of the problems historically in the formation of the US are the direct opposite of the problems in Europe.

Mainly, ... in Europe you have plenty of labour and no land; in the US we have always had plenty of land, but a massive shortage of labour.

You see these issues work themselves out in many ways over the last 500+ years from slavery, religious warfare, socialism, to trains, and even web groceries.

Now with the amazingly suicidal birthrate in Europe at the moment that is likely to change. However, I am sure that once the Muslims have reached majority and are able to implement Sharia law, your birthrates will start to climb back up. Say, 2030-ish?

Google for Mark Steyn & "It's the Demographics Stupid"

American too...

[YesIAmAScript]

Safeway does it here. And Peapod also offers a service.

I see the employee shoppers in Safeway a lot. They have these carts that know what they are to buy, and route the person on the shortest path through the store to pick up each item, and tells them which items to buy and which bin to put them in (since they shop for a couple people at once).

mostly items in bulk-Sams club, Costco.

[Anonymous Coward]

So how's that any different than a Sams Club or Costco?

--
The "are you a script" word for today is "wonted". (WTF?! even the capchas are mispelled)

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon.com doesn't seem to understand the internet. Look at ebay, google, paypal. What do they "sell". NOTHING. They sell the relationship between consumer and vendor by making it easy and fast. They have no warehouses (besides serverfarms), they have no inventory sitting and costing money, they are WEBSITES, dot coms, not businesses with a website. Amazon is in an incredible position to be one of the "brick and mortars" of the internet economy but they need to think ethereal and not physical. If you want to sell groceries, allow vendors to sell groceries over the internet to customers in the same city and take the glorious %1 off of every order. Jeff Bezeos is running too many circles on his Segway.

a terrible idea-saving gas.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another plus which no one's mentioning. The gas savings. It mights also reduce the load on the roadways.

I would take advantage of this

[macdaddy]

I live in the Midwest. It's not exactly the busiest place in the world but I often find myself too busy to go shopping. At times I'll eat every last thing in my cubbards before going to the store. I may go once a month and spend $250. It may take me all afternoon to pack it up as well. I would like to find more time to cook. I think I could do this if I could lessen the amount of time I spend doing other crap (other than work crap). I have a maid service come in twice a month to give the house a once over. That cuts a handful of misc tasks off my monthly list of stuff to do. I picked up an old riding mower which cut my mowing time down from about 90 minutes to 10. I even order many of my clothes online. I know my sizes. I could spend 30 minutes shopping online and pay $15 in shipping (or wait until I get a free shipping ad) or I could spend 90-120 minutes in a crowded store elbow to elbow with screaming kids and parents that don't give a damn. Compound that with not being able to find clothes in my size or the color I want and you've got yourself a horrible shopping experience. It's actually cheaper for me to buy things online because I save time, find what I want, and frequently find a good deal in the process. Not bad.

Basically I already try to embrace many of these services already. If I could have at least basic food supplies delivered to my doorstep for a small extra cost then I'd jump at the chance. There is a food service in my area that delivers food. It even does this in the very rural areas. It's called Schwans. Unfortunately they have a steep markup. If a company like Amazon can do something similar without the huge markup then I'm all for it.

Re:I would take advantage of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you Mother Hubbard?

Re:I would take advantage of this

[Danga]

I live in the Midwest as well, specifically the Chicago area. You should see if peapod.com delivers in your area. I have used them 5 times and they are great, even with perishables. I wait until I need a decent amount of stuff before I order because if your order is over $100 then the delivery fee goes down to $6.95 instead of $9.95. The prices are marked up a bit but if you watch for the specials I have noticed a lot of times it will be cheaper than the local grocery stores. They have a wide selection of items (everything I want to get at the local store is available online) and to me it is worth the slightly higher prices to have everything delivered right to my front door.

If you do use them then definitely make sure to check out the items that are on sale to save money and you can also save even more money by selecting a delivery time when they will already be in your area because you can usually get $1.50 off just by doing that. Oh, one more thing is they do accept all manufacturers coupons, you just have to give them to the driver when your order is delivered and he will apply them to the order price.

This could be taken too far

[Anonymous Coward]

I may avoid shopping for 'Hannibal' on Amazon once they start cross-marketing this service ...

Reporter, you is dumb!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wasting your time in submitting an informative post.

Most people at SlashDot disdain modern best practices of hygiene. When the morons saw your post, they promptly modded it down.

Safeway, Albertson, and Nob Hill require all their employees to wash their hands after using the toilet and to sanitize their hands (e.g., with antiseptic lotion) if their hands ever become contaminated. These requirements are not "for show". They are recommended by health/medical professionals.

What kind of numbskull at SlashDot would actually mock such best practices of hygiene? The numbskulls must be Indian or Chinese. Having lived in Taiwan, I can tell you that none of the employees at Chinese supermarkets or restaurants ever wash their hands. Taiwan also has the highest rate of hepatitus A and B in the world.

Re:Reporter, you is dumb!

[Anonymous Coward]

That says more about the lack of a state-sponsored immunization program than anything else, does it not? I'm relatively confident that I'm not about to get either Hep A or B.

Amazon vs. Local

[Botchka]

The problem with shopping for natural and organic foods at Amazon is you'll miss the smell of patchouli and body odor. Unless of course YOU haven't bathed in a week and shower in patchouli yourself...but nobody on /. could possibly be like this. In all seriousness though, most of your local health food stores run on very slim margins. I'd rather help support a local natural food store and try to keep some of the local population in their jobs. This isn't to say that Amazon offering this up isn't a good thing. I just don't think it's for everybody. That being said, getting healthy foods into the hands of more people is ALWAYS a good thing...

Get a decent immune system

[bill_mcgonigle]

If you're afraid of catching something from your peanut butter jar wear gloves when you shop and wipe everything down with Vodka before you take them off.

Actually you're better off eating whatever crap is on the peanut butter jar and bolstering your immune system. They have rat trials showing rats raised in sterile environments much less effective immune systems.

Re:Get a decent immune system

[kfg]

But if I live in a sterile environment what do I need an immune system for?

KFG

Re:Get a decent immune system

[bill_mcgonigle]

Ask the bubble boy.

Re:YEAH

[Anonymous Coward]

not even close

genuardis.com

[Tsu-na-mi]

Ever since I moved to the greater Philadelphia region a montho or two ago, I have been getting my groceries delivered. Both ACME (acmemarkets.com) and Genuardi's (genuardis.com) deliver to my address, and I couldn't be happier. They deliver produce, meat, frozen foods, everything. On top of that, Genuardi's has all their in-store card specials on the web as well, so I have gotten excellent discounts on most of the food I have bought. I have gotten free delivery every time as well, since I spent >$150 and they have coupons all the time in that regard.

I don;t need to wander through a store for an hour or two, shopping. I hit the web site, go through my shopping history and add the things I get regularly that I am low on. Then maybe I search for some new stuff and schedule the delivery for the next evening. I love it.

And the Amazon thing is not really new--I was searching for a certain brand of Japanese instant noodle soup and Amazon came up at the top of the results.

Early amazon stories for the fans

[sdfad1]

This is reminds me of the story about when Amazon went into auctions, taking on ebay. That didn't work out. Why? The customer behaviour is just different - you go to Amazon, you see book, you click. There's suggestions for other books etc, and you might or might not get those as well along the way. You deal with a company with a known reputation. Auctions is about bargain hunting, and assessing the reputation of whoever you are buying from. The consumer behaviour is just different.

Now, how is this grocery store any different? Can they give me a list of statistically improbable items in my shopping list (fertiliser, detergent, ammonium nitrate, charcoal, starch, paraffin oil... :) ;) just joking), or suggest grocery items? Or provide consumer reviews of products? Can that work? It might, but it sounds hard. There doesn't seem to be a compelling case.

The link I provided is very entertaining by the way. If interested, you want to start here. And read the whole blog, it's full of interesting tidbits (I'm not done with it yet). Greg's cool! He's one of us. (But wait there's more: here's a similar one for Google too! Doug's a marketing guy, and you can read Ron Garret's posts for the technical stuff.)

Why don't they have pick up service?

[dmeiz]

You order and pay online and hit the store on your way home from work. You drive through and they put the stuff in your trunk. Why won't this work?

can't resist....

[binarybum]

in Soviet Russia Vodka wastes YOU! ... seriously.

now I can order

[Wescotte]

Ramen by the case!

Top Ten List (no not Letterman's)

[siriuskase]

Every top ten item is a diaper, #11 is Bounty towels which I suppose could be used as diapers, then it is back to diapers again until the fertility test #14 and razors at #15, then it's all diapers and babywipes again to round out the top 20.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/t op-sellers/-/grocery/16310211/102-8388649-7401761

Re:Top Ten List (no not Letterman's)

[enronman]

Thats easy, Amazon has been having some crazy mad sales on Diapers... Cheapest place to get them right now. AND let me tell as the owner of a rugrat they go through a LOT of diapers.

Finally.

[bronney]

I can get my cup noodles with "sex for dummies!"

Not exactly

[grahamsz]

My parents live about 9 miles from the nearest supermarket, in a relatively rural area. They have, I believe, three supermarkets that will deliver.

I live in an suburban area of Colorado, and only 5 miles from the nearest supermarkets and yet I can't get a single supermarket to deliver. Apparently i'm too far out!?

I think it has a lot more to do with the US tendency to drive. Many people in the UK find 18 miles r/t too far to drive to pick up a few items - yet in the US that's nothing.

Population Density

[Otto]

"Urbanized areas" is a pretty loose term. Do they mean urbanized like NYC? Or urbanized like Dallas, TX?

I used to live near Dallas/Fort Worth. You can drive 200 miles there and never leave an "urban" area, if you drive it East/West. Even North/South it's about 80 miles.

NYC's density is 26720 people per square mile.
Chicago's is 12604/sq mi
London's is ~12071/sq mi.

On the other hand...
Dallas' is 3534/sq mi.
Memphis' is 346.9/sq mi.

So you see, there's a bit of a difference there. Driving distance is indeed a factor for a large portion of the population. You really need a certain density to support this kind of thing on a local level.

Several stores have tried it in the past and failed. Kroger tried it in a few test markets. I was in Huntsville at the time they tried it there, but it only lasted about 6 months. They couldn't get enough people to use it to make it worth hiring more drivers, and they couldn't get the groceries to all the people in enough time to make more people want to use it.

Re:Population Density

[Kancept]

And if you look at where my mom and dad live in Montana, it's 5/sq mile. Dogs outnumber the people.

Who wants non-perishable food?

[FishinDave]

I like mine dead.

Re:Correlation between Reading habits & Eating

[Anonymous Coward]

That you need clean underwear?

Dejavu.....

[IHC Navistar]

Let's see if the spirit of Amazon can defeat the ghost of Webvan!

-----

Sig Sauer

And if I had my own barcode scanner ...

[shimmin]

And this is what I want next: I want a handheld barcode scanner in my kitchen. I want to be able to scan the groceries as I put them away, and scan the empty packaging as I throw it away, and then let software auto-generate the shopping list and do price comparison for me. And if item-level RFID ever happens, I wouldn't have to even scan things individually.

Re:And if I had my own barcode scanner ...

[Rifter13]

Hmmm.. another memory back in my Albertsons.com days... The director was looking at a trash can that would scan the UPCs, as you tossed items in the trash, and put the items into your shopping list. :-)

Osaka Flu!

[lowrydr310]

Look out, we might start to see an Osaka flu pandemic across the United States!

exercise ?

[chrisranjana.com]

As technology improves people are going to get less and less exercise Earlier people atleast had to *walk* to their grocery store !

I can see it now...

[Aqua_boy17]

Welcome to Amazon.com. For recommendations matching your profile click here.

People who purchased:

• "Creamed Corn"

also bought...Broccoli Bites, Cauliflour Florettes, eggplant, and Ranch Dip.

• Read reviews about "Creamed Corn"

• Be the first to write a review about this product.

albertsons.com

[Rifter13]

I worked for Albertsons.com back in the late 90s to 2001. They started out with a warehouse, and were shipping non-perishables to select markets, but it was not working out so well. So, then the director started looking around at how others supplied food via the web, and really liked Tesco's version. If you look at how Tesco works and how Albertsons.com works, they are very similiar (at least, when I was working there, they were). Basically, you have a guy that "shops" for you. They go down the aisls and pick out items, toss it in a box, and either ship it to you on the next day, or have it ready that evening. I think it costs about $6 to pick up the order, or $10 or so to deliver the order. I know back when we were trying to figure out how to do this, we were avoiding the Peapod model, because it did not work as well as we wanted. In a MAJOR population center, it works ok, but as things spread out, their model used to start coming apart.

Fresh Direct only makes it by double parking

[vinn01]

I wonder if Fresh Direct could "scale" in NYC? They only make it by double parking. If "everyone" started getting Fresh Direct deliveries, they would completely tie up traffic in some neighborhoods.

Re:Fresh Direct only makes it by double parking

[Nybarius]

Another delivery trend, which harkens back to the good old days of kozmo.com, is Max Delivery. They're primarily focused on delivering movies, but will deliver anything. Their MO is to pick up stuff from a variety of stores and deliver it to you. This reduces their overhead, presumably. Also, they use bike couriers. Delivery.com is a pretty good solution for ordering food online, although all they do is fax your order to participating restaurants.

Online shopping helps the handicapped.

[Rifter13]

Actually, something that no one has hit on. When you design a site well, you open up all kinds of opportunities for people that are disabled, and have trouble shopping. When building albertsons.com we tried to adhere to good methods of page design, and that turned out to be a real boon for us, since the blind could use our site after a little practce. There was a lady up in Seattle that we flew down, to speak with our ecommerce team about the difficulties of "reading" a website, and things we could do, to make sites easier to navigate. I know it is not something we pushed, but it is something I am happy to have been a part of. Subsequent designs, we would have her look at, to make sure they were accessable, and would get her feedback, to make them better. Having online shopping opens up all kinds of opportunities to people that are handicap, to be more self sufficient. The lady that I am speaking about above, was able to shop, by herself for the first time in her life, because of our site. It is just plain cool, to be a part of something like that.

irradiation: kills germs & allows perishables

[Anonymous Coward]

Irradiation would kill all those extra germs you worry about and, with special packaging, would let Amazon ship perishables such as meat. I look forward to the cheaper, nuclear future.

I miss Webvan!

[Cleon]

I miss Webvan. I'm not afraid to say it. I miss Webvan. With Webvan, I could select the groceries I needed, select a time for them to be delivered, and the guy (who was invariably friendly) would carry them up to my apartment to drop them off. On time, every time. The prices were reasonable and the goods were high quality.

Now, with Amazon's scheme, I can buy only non-perishable foods (the vast majority of which I can find cheaper as a generic brand at Kroger), and then wait for "Super Saver Shipping" to deliver in its own good time. Then, if I'm not home, they'll either leave it at my door for someone to pilfer, or take it down to the office so I can schlep it back up.

I miss Webvan.

Amazon Supermarket has been open for ....

[OldHawk777]

Folks,

Check reality today then speak:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=sc_bb_br_ 3370831_32/103-0947571-2406231?_encoding=UTF8&node =3594761&no=3370831&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER

The prices really really suck...

[revlayle]

Just looking a breakfast cereals that I would buy, I can save 30% of their price (and they sell in BULK) just going down to the grocery store a mile and a half away... which I would rather do anyways.

Not new to me...

[lokispundit]

Out here in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area. Acme Markets http://www.acmemarkets.com/ has been doing this for a few years. You simply make your online grocery list, and you can choose between pickup for $5 or delivery for $10. They do everything from meat to produce. I think it started as a service to the elderly, but I know I used it once when I just couldn't get to the store and it was a real convenience.

Amazon Prime isn't worth it for most people

[default luser]

And that is the point. Amazon has checked their records, have processed billions of data points, and have reached the simple conclusion: only a handful of shoppers buy something regularly from Amazon. Most Amazon shoppers (from my experience, and people I know) buy things in spurts (for birthdays and christmas), and then make a rare purchase.

From what I've seen, this is how Amazon works: the "free shipping" means that, on price search engines which include shipping costs, Amazon's prices are really low. Most of the regular buyers use the free shipping option, but usually that free shipping takes over a week. Unfortunately for Amazon, most people who are too lazy to go to a store to do their shopping still "want it now," so they end up paying for standard shipping or better. So why is it unfortunate that people "want it now?" Simple: after a few times shopping Amazon, people begin to calculate shipping into the cost of the item, and suddenly Amazon's prices aren't so great, so they start shopping around.

And that is why they're launching this Prime crap. I agree with the grandparent that the grocery service is meant to drive Prime. Prime is meant to keep customers coming back, and THAT fuels your ability to expand into new markets, so you have to start the system going by dangling a goodie (groceries) at the end of a stick. Amazon sees the opportunity: people always think they will get the better end of the deal with subscriptions, but they rarely take advantage of it. I knew guys who would waste $20/month on a Netflix subscription back in the day, and never see more than 2 movies. People sign up for monthy cable fees larger than a YEAR of prime, but don't watch more than %10 of their channels. Folks buy up BJ or Costco cards and never use them. It's the nature of the business.

That said, Prime is a win-win situation for Amazon. If people don't increase their shopping habits, they likely won't cancel the Prime account so long as they remain a customer. If people DO increase their shopping habits, Amazon still makes money, because even their heaviest shoppers wouldn't order more than a couple dozen times a year, and the extra sales would easily make up for a few abusers.

Look at me: I typically buy from Amazon about 4-6 times per year. Prime would not be worth it to me because I can do math, and I usually just pay for standard shipping, which is nearly as fast. But to most people, the free "trial" is enticing, and they figure they'll get their money's worth in the long run. To Amazon, this is money in the bank. I'll bet even with half-a-dozen orders from me (some hundreds of dollars) and standard shipping, Amazon doesn't make $40 off me, let alone the $80 it costs to join Prime for a year.

Amazon needs all the hooks they can to get people to sign up for Prime. Expect them to offer even more stuff for sale in the coming years.