A French Grocery Chain Is Trolling Amazon Go
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Monoprix live in a nice niche of upper class consumers living in the center of rich towns. The produits are kind of expensive, but the service is neat.
I can see a lot of people living outside the city using this service because Monoprix is near their workplace. They go after work, ask for delivery, go back home by train, and then are delivered the day after for instance.
Can you take some of the items immediately?
Do checkout lines still occur?
- leave your trolley to the shipping service and pay everything when your are shipped.
- leave your trolley, pay everything there pick any item your want and be shipped the rest later. (Depending on the crowd, there will likely be checkout line)
- go to the cashier (or an automatic machine), pay there and bring your stuff home yourself. (Checkout line here also)
When you finish walking around shopping you put your basket/ cart into a waiting slot and some Fresh delivery person grabs it and loads it into their truck. They already have your payment and shipping information too.
1. How will Amazon technology work if two friends are walking into the store and both are adding products to the cart?
2. How will it work in a crowded store as it's quite possible that the product will end up if a different account?
Amazon might have to invest in more security guards than cashiers!
I have been using self-service checkouts for more than a decade in most countries. I'd be surprised if that was considered news.
Amazon Go and instant payment systems are a different topic entirely though.
Also, "very fast" is debatable: it's often broken, and some items are subject to different buying conditions and can't be purchased via these self-service checkout lanes, like alcohol, or "luxury" items with high margins, like razor blades.
Quite often, if given the choice of an almost empty till queue or a self-service line, I'll pick the almost empty till queue. It's often more efficient.
Self-service is great for 24/7 supermarkets though. I remember really huge Tesco stores in the UK that are but where you can shop at 3AM and use the self-service. Most employees at this time of night are the stock management people, and there's only one or 2 cashiers left (and security, obviously). The rest is self-service. For that scenario, it's indeed convenient.
With the handheld ones (first picture) you just scan the products and put them into your bag when you pick them up at the store aisle. To pay, scan a special barcode at the checkout and put your card into the machine.
No need to rebag your stuff, shows you your current total to pay at all times, and it's simple enough that I've never seen it out of order. Oh, and there's no risk of getting stuck behind that family that apparently wants to get the whole year's food shopping out of the way.
Neat.
What I have also seen in the Hypercarrefour in Bruges that they scan your groceries when waiting in line to the checkout. Then they print a ticket on their mobile printer which you just need to give to the checkout and pay.
A local Delhaize (Food Lion in the US) experimented with a fixed POS where you needed to take out all your groceries, self-scan and pay. I have also used the same system at Tesco in Prague. Not the most pleasant system in comparison than the mobile version Carrefour and also Auchan uses where you just walk through the store with a mobile scanner.
Other local retailers (colruyt, aldi, lidl, Albert Hein) are more classic in that regards.
"t's often broken, and some items are subject to different buying conditions and can't be purchased via these self-service checkout lanes, like alcohol, or "luxury" items with high margins, like razor blades."
To be honest that's not a problem when using self-scan at Carrefour. Only if you buy alcohol or tabaco they may ask for your age or if you are picked out for an inspection. There is no limit in what you buy.
Although that is the situation here in Belgium.
Colruyt, aldi and lidl might consider the expense of the machine + people to do the random inspection as a cost they do not want, as they do aim to keep the price as low as possible. Wether you pay people to sit at a checkout or wait to check other people, the amount of money you might end up saving might have been considered not significant.
The main reason I stay away from such services.
With Albert Heijn you can also order online and they'll deliver it (not all areas supported yet), and with Plus you can order online from an app. The disadvantage with not picking your own groceries (as being outlined in the video of this article) is that you can't pick an article which expires later, or looks/smells fresher. You don't get to check if your eggs are all intact. You don't get to check if none of your cookies are broken. Etc. Not saying that always matters, but it can be important.
This would make shopping there much more appealing.
1) Successful business model (retail)
2) Smart iteration on the business model (Monoprix livraison a domicile +)
3) For legacy reason, do not upend the whole business model, do not put it front and center, limit it to some categories / users
4) Watch a younger competitor, not uncumbered by legacy, focus solely on that service
5) Get shocked when they get PR. Release a video to say you've done it for 10years
6) Go bankrupt as the new service spreads like wildfire
Monoprix home delivery is great, my grandmother uses it quite a lot, but retailers are still totally going to get taken over by Amazon
I like shopping online with Amazon, but I would hate seeing groceries taken away with unmanned dystopian and probably very dysfunctional automated outlets like on the Amazon video.
What happens when something goes wrong? -- The automated video system thinks you have taken two products when you have taken just one; or it thinks you have taken one and you took two, and a security guy who has zero authority over how the system operates, or understanding of it, accuses you of stealing; or a discount was advertised on the shelf but not implemented on the system; etc.
What happens if Amazon decides, for some reason that they will not explain and that you can't appeal, to cancel your account? Then you can't even go grocery shopping?
The future is much less exciting than it used to be.
Personally I've found Amazon's customer service is pretty reasonable (sometimes you need to dig in the site to find something). I know they aren't a great company in other ways - their workers are poorly paid and overworked, but that's one thing I'm not worried about.
> What happens if Amazon decides, for some reason that they will not explain and that you can't appeal, to cancel your account? Then you can't even go grocery shopping?
Only if they have a monopoly, if this proves successful I expect other shops will start investing in this too (or licence the technology). You're just as likely to have an issue currently if you live in Bumfuck, Nowhere and the only store around refuses to serve you because they suspect you of stealing.
In any case I can always walk up to the manager at Bumfuck General Store and resolve any disagreement we might have, simply by... talking. Also, said manager is in charge, he can make decisions and reverse previous decisions.
Amazon employees aren't in charge of anything, the system is. They can read what's on their screen, and press a few buttons on screens that have choices, and that's it.
The problem with automation isn't only that robots are displacing humans, but that at the same time it's changing humans into robots (dumb ones).
Amazon can't push the volume needed to compete with the heavyweight in this region (Kroger, thru their Fred Meyer, Safeway, QFC & Albertsons brands control 90% of the grocery volume in Seattle) thus their prices will always be significantly higher. That combined with poor location and a core misunderstanding of their market (eg. who in your average household is buying groceries and what goods/price point will they buy at) will limit their potential market.
Amazon is not a plucky young startup. It's a twentyfive year old enterprise that hires MBA's in the hope of staying relevant. It's last major success was AWS, a product that scratched its own itch and monetized necessary but idle capacity. Most importantly it was B2B.
In B2C Amazon has been incrementing extraction since the original Kindle. Prime is Sam's Club + Netflix + arcane pricing and shipping terms. Echo is Siri for shopping. All of it comes on the back of higher prices whenever Amazon's algorithms suggest it can get away with it.
And that's the real way to judge the status of Amazon. It structures transactions in its favor and requires consumer vigilance. The Monoprix pitch is really about that more than anything else. The pitch provides a plausible explanation of how the transaction works and implies that the ordinary norms of human transactions are at work. The cashier is going to charge everyone the same price that's on the shelf and the delivery person is not going to implement surge pricing.
In the USA and the young population. Maybe.
In the rest of the world and population. Not so sure.
How about Amazon GO? Is that a toy / experience / novelty for affluent tech-savvy early adopters?
Sorry if I'm not political correct. I tried. My intent is not to troll or offend people who do shop at Whole Foods. I actually live in San Francisco, 10 feet away from a Whole Foods. I previously lived in Seattle, too. I feel that, compared to other fields such as Finance or law, tech tend to be more self-conscientious and guilty about income inequality.
Monoprix is the most expensive supermarket.
Carrfour Market ~ Monoprix > franprix (who is going premiumish also) > 8a8 > g20 > lidl et al > alimentation general du coin
Although unlike in the US, most of its competitors are owned by the same parent company, Casino Group.
They print little puns on the packaging of their own products.
The bad accent of the man doing the narration is a little unnerving; they could have gone with a heavy French accent which could have been funny (maybe), or they could have hired a native speaker. But this sounds like they took the first guy in the hall who said he spoke English.
They also have an online delivery service which works really well.
They do tend to have a bit more choice when it comes to fine foods and sell some premium brands like Valrhona that you wouldn't necessarily find in normal supermarkets.
Their target demographic is not tech-friendly at all, quite the opposite, but indeed affluent: they are located in the center of rich french cities, where wealthy, often more than 50, people live.
Not any more than e.g. Whole Foods and Krogers consumers.
>while referencing Amazon GO, located thousands of miles away in a different country
You make it sound difficult. In fact Amazon Go made global news, and we have this web thing.
Funny PR, though !
I wish we've had some French bakeries and supermarkets in the Bay Area, not this Amazon stuff... Even Whole Foods is not quite there yet :-/
When I buy online I have to wait for delivery, but at least I don't have to go looking for stuff in 20 different isles only to find out the thing I needed is in a completely illogical place, or deal with all the people there.
This concept combines all the disadvantages of physically going to a supermarket with all the disadvantages of buying online. Amazon's concept actually improves the physical buying experience.
I don't want to speculate but it would help if a french gentleman tells us his experience.
Not being able to take your stuff home is a little annoying, but depending on where you live it can be almost necessary to have groceries delivered. In Paris many buildings don't have elevators at all, or very small ones that can hold at most two people and not many bags. If you live on the 5th floor you're happy to get someone bring the bags up the stairs for you.
I could imagine using a reliable service again but, so long as driving to the store and shopping is straightforward, ordering online for delivery isn't something I really need.
If Amazon has shocked the supermarket industry in to action then that's awesome.
Pffft, it's got nothing to do with Amazon, that's just the marketing spiel.
But you are right, though - I'm working in this space and Amazon Go definitely helped to shake up some people. Let's see if we can turn this into action.
Either Amazon copied the ideia or they reinvented the wheel.
If so, that can be a big difference, especially to the crowd that puts groceries in their personal bags, as depicted in both ads.
[0] https://www.monoprix.fr/livraison-a-domicile?menuName=servic...
I doubt they are using that.
Didn't claim it was.
>how would you suggest those cases are handled?
Obviously the same way as you suggest.
But the parent talked about them MERELY using human operators behind cameras, like it's just some mechanical turk-based fraud...
So, face recognition to track people + image recognition to track products (which is not that difficult, since it's a constrained data set e.g. 40.000 products to train, and they can also use information about position to narrow results -- eg. aisle B, so it's one of the soaps, etc).
Wish it was that easy. People have a habit of picking stuff up and putting it in the wrong place. Staff at stores spend forever putting stuff back to it's correct place and binning stuff that should have been refrigerated but placed somewhere non-refrigerated.
Well, the stuff will already have been identified in the picking stage.
Sure, but you take some semi-random object out of the basket and add it to the wrong shelf. Do that a few times and things are going to get much harder.
If we're honest, regardless there will be wrong classifications anyway - if it wasn't for laser scanners humans would make more mistakes as well and these are nowhere near human intelligence.
Granted, this is especially a good fit for me because I work from home and can receive deliveries any time.
You have online shopping and delivery as you mention. I'd do this more myself if there were a service I liked where I live.
One of the local chains around here started up a "To Go" service recently. You shop online and pick up. I assume the market here is people who can easily drive but may not be very mobile or have young kids that just make it a hassle to do the picking themselves. (My anecdotal observation is this service isn't being used much.)
And this case is pretty much what a lot of markets in cities have been doing forever. (Often smaller markets but I believe Whole Foods does this in some locations as well.)
Monoprix may have found that they can make more money / save on initial outlay of shop fitting by offering a similar service, but without the technology.
Whole Foods: Cute ad but let's see where customers ...
There is always a market for people willing to pay more for whatever reason.
By contrast, HN is 65k and 1s.