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Google To Deliver Groceries
An anonymous reader writes: Out of carrots? Fire up Google and search for some. They might just show up at your house. Bloomberg reports that the search giant will start testing a grocery delivery service later this year in San Francisco and one other city. Google will be partnering with Costco, Whole Foods, and other grocery stores to source their products. "Google is investing in delivery services for homes and businesses as it seeks to lure more traffic to its websites. The move puts the company in more direct competition with Amazon, which has rolled out its AmazonFresh service in several U.S. cities. ... The fresh-food trial, including fruits and vegetables, is part of a move away from making deliveries from warehouses, which can add complexity and requires refrigeration."
I searched google shopping for a confederate flag.
No results.
I'll stick with duck duck go.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Back then you had to use the interwebs or actually talk to someone on the telephone-thingy.
Now, "there's an app for that."
Apps are magic, they can turn anything into money. I know this is true because an App told me so.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, and Webvan was great!
Um i have seen Google Express cars around here for years now, presumably doing mostly grocery deliveries. Not sure what we are talking about ?
https://www.google.com/express...
You could always read the article if you want to know more about what the summary is about:
Google Inc. will start testing a delivery service for fresh food and groceries in two U.S. cities later this year, stepping up competition with online retailer Amazon.com Inc. and startup Instacart Inc.
The trial will begin in San Francisco and another city, said Brian Elliott, general manager of Google Express, which already delivers merchandise, including dry foods, to customers. Whole Foods Market Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp. will be among Google’s partners for the new service, he said.
(emphasis mine)
WebVan is the most famous. As I see it, home grocery delivery is an infrastructure problem. WebVan failed by expanding rapidly in multiple markets, before they had the cash flow to really support even one market. Furthermore, the infrastructure they built was not really what they needed (which is why they should have started in one market and expanded.......make the mistakes at a small scale, then you know what to avoid when you scale up).
Now there are plenty of companies doing it. I know one person who does all their shopping this way. I had the impression Google was already doing this is in some markets.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Not sure if it's just a US thing. In the UK, "click and collect" is available in most supermarkets (and in Australia, for that matter). But then so is web-ordered home delivery.
As I said back when Amazon started trialing this, I think they'll find it hard to compete with the supermarkets. Fresh food can't be stored in a warehouse on one side of the country and posted everywhere; it requires a complex distribution infrastructure, with local stock regularly replenished and without everything passing through a central distribution point to get there. It also requires some well-developed methodology for estimating stock requirements ahead of time. Supermarkets that are regularly out of stock don't do well, nor do ones that significantly over-stock and have to throw goods away.
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This made me laugh...
Amazon outsources their local deliveries. Where I live it's OnTrac. I have never seen an OnTrac delivery vehicle that wasn't dented-up as badly as airport service vehicles. I really don't know why, I've had a field van assigned to me at my job for the last decade and the only obvious scrapes are on the back bumper where I park it against the fence so that it's harder to break into. These vans look like they strayed into the opening heat of a demolition derby before they realized and got the hell out; doesn't matter if it's a Ford Econoline, Ford Transit Connect, GMC Savannah or Chevy Express, or a Sprinter, they're always bashed up.
I suspect that they're being parked back at the lot by people that simply don't care; if they were in that many accidents on the road they'd probably have their insurance revoked and be shut down.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Local grocery chains are already better positioned to offer this kind of service; their stores themselves can act as the supply house from which the order is pulled, assembled, and delivered from. Even if a particular chain decides to select only specific stores to do it, those can be the best equipped stores with the most merchandise variety to source from.
This whole thing reminds me of how Sears really screwed up; they could have been the Amazon of today if they had leveraged their geographical ubiquity and made home delivery and online ordering work with the Internet. They had one of the best catalog services ever, and they tore it apart to put their efforts into store retail sales. They could have fulfilled same-day or next-day delivery to probably 80% of the population of the United States for LOTS of products if they'd tried. Instead their various divisions are forced to compete against each other.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Local grocery chains are already better positioned to offer this kind of service; their stores themselves can act as the supply house from which the order is pulled, assembled, and delivered from. Even if a particular chain decides to select only specific stores to do it, those can be the best equipped stores with the most merchandise variety to source from.
But only if they have accurate real time inventory, otherwise they can't complete with a company with good enough logistics to tell you when the item you're ordering is out of stock. I've ordered from Instacart a few times (Safeway and Whole Foods), and though their service is very convenient, they are regularly out of stock of 10 - 20% of the items I ordered. I realize that the same item is out of stock at the store, but at least when I'm shopping at the store I can look around for a suitable substitute even if it's not in the same class of item that I ordered ("Oh crap, they are out of sandwich meat, I guess I'll get a frozen pizza instead"). It got to the point where i'd have to go shopping after they delivered the order so I could pick up the things that I really needed, and if I have to go to the store anyway, I might as well pick up *everything* I need.
We tried a grocery delivery service when it first rolled out here in Minneapolis back in 2000. The whole experience was kind of disappointing. For likely logistical reasons you had some kind of order deadline a day or so before the order would be delivered and of course in sophistication terms, the ordering process was web-2000 clunky.
The bigger problem was that even though someone else picked the items and delivered them, it didn't feel like it saved a ton of time or effort. We have 5 major supermarkets within 10 minutes drive, so transit isn't an issue. With delivery, you still have to unload the containers into your house, so walking the bags from the car isn't really eliminated. Frozen is problematic unless you're home when the delivery comes.
And ordering from a list is problematic -- I often find myself making closer judgements on items I may not buy regularly and you can't do that from a list. Sometimes you have a sudden change about what you might buy in the store -- an inspiration from something you see, a realization that making a specific meal doesn't make sense due to a change in plans, or remembering somehting that wasn't on your shopping list and so on. And then there's choosing produce and meat. I can make decisions about that stuff that fit my own specific standards, not some grocery pickers standards.
There's also the notion that some people like shopping in person. It can be a chore, but I'm sure more than one married parent will admit that sticking their spouse with the kids while you go to the store is a mini-escape, complete with an unadvertised trip to Starbucks and/or some other side trip.
There's also the notion that some people like shopping in person.
because maybe today's produce sucks and you can decide on the spot to have something different for dinner instead of eating stale vegetables
Here in the UK there is a online only supermarket called Ocado that I use and solves this problem
What's possibly surprising to Americans is home-delivered groceries is a solved problem in Britain. Tesco has been selling through a website since 1996, almost as long as Amazon. Delivery costs as little as £1, and you choose a time slot for delivery.
Wander round any British town or city and you'll soon notice delivery vans from Tesco, Sainsbury's, Ocado, Waitrose, Asda or the other large supermarkets. They're probably the most common commercial vehicles after about 7pm in residential areas.
Mainly I had never thought that they were in a position to overtake Amazon, but his post made me realize they were.
I didn't think their brick-and-mortar locations could be an asset, but I guess that shows my short-sightedness.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."