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Comment by jtmarmon | Hacker News Reader

speaking personally, in NYC (and presumably other cities where you often don't own a car and instead use public transit) it's quite a pain to get groceries. if you're walking back, you're carrying a lot of crap that's broken to breakage or spillage. then there's the risk you might have too much to carry yourself, then what do you do? getting them delivered is a big help and above a minor convenience for me - i just wouldn't buy groceries otherwise

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Would more frequent, smaller purchase trips be better or is the human traffic/congestion at the grocery store in NYC consistently just too much of a time drain to make that strategy reasonable?

-- EDIT -- I'm curious about others' grocery buying habits because I don't use Instacart.

Ok, so let's say hypothetically this takes off. Now you have an army of grocery getters, for every person in NYC that doesn't leave to get their own groceries. All this does is offset all of those issues, to the person delivering your food. I guess if that convenience is worth the crazy money you have to pay for it sure, but I'd just go out to eat at that point. Especially in NYC.

Where I live in LA, the only grocery store in reasonable walking distance is a Whole Foods. It's actually cheaper for me to use a grocery delivery service for basics like milk, eggs, and produce every week than it is for me to buy the equivalents from Whole Foods. Delivery services are a no-brainer in my situation.

(I do use a particular delivery service that has direct relationships with farmers, so that could partially explain why it's so cheap.)

I lived in Venice, CA in the mid 00's, about 2 blocks from the Ralph's on Lincoln. They used to let us leave with the shopping carts. Then they'd send a pickup full of guys to pick up shopping carts every evening. So we would just unload the cart and leave it in our front-yard for pickup. I absolutely loved it.

In contrast, in Brooklyn, they won't even let you bring the shopping cart into the parking lot. But then again, just about everyone I knew in Brooklyn had one of those pull carts and just used that to shop / carry their groceries home. That said, I generally chose FreshDirect over dragging my own groceries around once FD finally came to Bushwick.

> All this does is offset all of those issues, to the person delivering your food.

The person delivering food may be able to use different mechanisms (e.g. vehicles) or division of labor (teamwork) that are not practical for the recipient.

> I'd just go out to eat at that point.

This is not always practical or desirable for lots of people: the sick, those with young kids, the infirm, etc.

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