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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

I'm always surprised grocery delivery is still a big deal in the US. All the major supermarkets in the UK do home delivery, next day, for a £3-5 delivery fee. You can go the site, fill your basket, and checkout. You also get a 1-2 hour delivery slot so you don't have to wait at home all day. We also have Amazon Prime Now doing grocery delivery within 1 hour in some cities. I can see how it would be a problem in some less densely populated areas in the US but how it's not done in all cities is beyond me. Any one know?

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My guess is that its due to traditionally very sprawled out cities in the US. Huge amounts of the population live miles away from grocery stores. I think in New York you were able to get delivery for years for groceries if you were willing to pay the local grocer extra.

When I lived in New York 5 years ago, every grocery store I went to had some sort of delivery option.

Can you order through their website, app, etc? I'm not going to call in a weeks grocery shopping over the phone.

Peapod, fresh direct, Google shopping express, max delivery, Amazon fresh, to name a few. We use peapod for almost all of our groceries, ordering about every other week

Even a lot of bodegas have their own little websites for ordering.

A fair amount of US grocery stores do as well. Our local grocery store has a pick up option as well as a delivery. Another a few miles down the road near a restaurant we enjoy also has a (free) place for us to charge our car why we shop.

I am hesitant to adopt them. I guess we are finicky about how we shop. Fearful of the bad head of lettuce or banana or what have you. Or how will we know they didn't chose the yogurt that expires in two days over the one that has two weeks?

What my girlfriend and I do is use AnyList (there are multiple other apps, but we are liking this one). And start at opposite ends of the store. Checking off the list real time as we shop.

There are ways around this though. Using Ocado in the UK, they will specify minimum lifetimes for all of the products you order and display them prominently (for example, in the iPhone app: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3d0awqydeqq386v/2016-06-03%2019.58...)

I'm pretty sure they'll also refund anything you aren't happy with, which helps to keep quality high.

> Fearful of the bad head of lettuce or banana or what have you

In the UK you simply tell the delivery driver that you're not happy with the item and he marks it for refund. Generally they hand the item back as well, no point carrying it back to the store to be dumped.

Home delivery was very common in the US years ago but started to become more uncommon probably in the 1970s. When I was a kid we still had a milkman too, those are mostly gone today as well.

> those are mostly gone today as well Interesting perspective. This is what happens when the internet comes in to play, even news paper readership has gone down aswell due to the rise of many digital mediums for people to get their news from. I was also listening to a radio program about the evening news and the big 4 networs (ABC/CBS/NBC) trying to stay relevant because the news they report is something that has already hit the internet. What do you think of this ?

At least in NYC, the local chains will do same day delivery.

I think it's a matter of geography/density

It's a combination of geography/density and not being able to easily hop in a car and park (for free) at a grocery store. The delivery equation totally shifts once you have to carry your groceries home or take a cab/Uber.

So do a number of US groceries, either independently or through a service, including Google Express (or both.)

And we had Prime Now first.

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan as early as 1996.

Well, Amazon Prime Now was available here first. Especially here in Seattle, hometown of Amazon after all.

If you do it in the evening it's only £1 usually. Hardly any reason to go to the supermarket anymore.

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