Comment by palakchokshi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by palakchokshi | Hacker News Reader

This is a thought experiment on my end:

What if there was a mobile(not cellphone) grocer that frequented locations where people might consider buying from the grocer?

A grocer truck (like a food truck) could frequent train station parking lots as designated times allowing commuters to shop a couple of days' groceries. A grocer truck could frequent central locations in a neighborhood at designated times to allow residents to walk up to the truck to purchase groceries.

Upsides:

grocery when you need it without trips to the supermarkets

purchase less but more often than a once a week trip.

convenient location and timing to do grocery shopping

no parking hassles if the model is a walk up to purchase groceries.

downsides: limited choice (can be mitigated if grocer has a mobile app)

limited supply (again if there is an app and you can preorder the items are kept aside for you for a limited time before being sold) Perishable items cannot be set aside indefinitely.

limited pick up options (grocer can field location requests and can add a location if there is enough demand for it)

All this might have already been tried but I don't know of it. What other downsides do you see apart from the fact that some people would rather order from a restaurant than cook? This would not be for those people who don't want to cook.

Everything you describe is how this works in much of the world, except remove the wheels.

The station near my work has three "supermarkets" within 50m of the entrance, catering to three different price brackets. There's nowhere to park, they sell very little other than food[1], and they only provide baskets -- they don't expect people to buy more than they can fit on a bicycle. They're open every day, from 7-22.

[1] They sell detergents and so on, but you can't buy a TV or a pair of jeans, or a huge box of anything.

That's good to know. In my birth country growing up I remember my mom used to buy a couple of days' vegetables from a roaming vegetable vendor. The vegetables were fresh and available at the doorstep in the morning before lunch preparation began. Since we were vegetarians we didn't see or know if there were meat vendors that did this too but my guess is there weren't since these "mobile" vendors didn't have refrigeration on their push carts.

Doesn't sound like it would work, because there are at least two problems with that.

The first problem would be a kind of rendez-vous game [0]. Given the available information, seller and buyers have to choose their location such that they maximize the likelihood of finding their couterpart. Whereas people might think "Oh! Don't mind if I do!" if they see an ice cream truck, that's much less likely with groceries. Generally, people walk into a supermarket with a general idea of what they're going to buy, if not with an outright list. If the seller has higher costs of moving around than his customers, he'll just pick a place as a fixed permanent position at or near his warehouse (a.k.a a "store") and make it known so that customers might come to him. An ice cream truck, on the other hand, will just move to where the crowds are.

The second problem is that grocers seem to compete on variety and price. While you could sell a large variety of products from a truck, you'd be able to get a higher return on your dollar if you increased scale (suppliers might give you discounts, for instance). So a fixed shop could offer as much variety as truck, but at a lower price.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_problem

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