Probably the best thing about COVID is now all stores here do curbside pickup. I don't understand why it took COVID to make companies realize that "hey, a large part of your clientele don't want to wander your aisles."
Because making shoppers wander the aisles leads them to buy more things than they intended to. There's a reason best-selling items are always placed at eye level.
And the dairy or automotive sections are nowhere near the entrance. They want you to impulse buy some cookies or a $5 DVD on your way to get milk or an oil change.
For example you might see a novel ingredient in the ethnic food section of the app, go look up a recipe that includes it, add all the rest of the ingredients all without putting on pants.
Less foot traffic, less money.
They ended up just raising prices on all products purchased through Shipt (instacart) or through curbside. Most people don’t notice that a pack of batteries is 5.49 in store versus 5.99 in the app.
Some big ticket items, like Xboxes or other digital items, where customers generally know the price, were not increased. But in general it worked out well and became profitable.