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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."
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...
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.
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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.
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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
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.
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh
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.