Grocery delivery is done with trucks fully loaded with orders and an optimized route for fuel efficiency.
It is actually much more energy efficient to package 40 ppl grocery orders in _one_ 4.3 tonne 10' truck, and make an efficient delivery route, than to have 40 people drive to their grocery store in an empty 3 tonne vehicle.
I am not sure what the situation in the US is but realistically in Europe if you have a big enough family online grocery shopping is a no-brainer.
I only shop physically for very specific perishables like bread, fruit, cheeses. Have been doing it every since our family grew and our time, mental bandwith, and lower backs decayed.
During the pandemic, we have done a lot of pick-up orders. Let's just say that the selections are not always what I would have made.
I don't blame the store workers or anything. Usually even things are mostly fine (e.g., not bruised, over/under ripe, etc). But sometimes ...
Put it in another way, if I wanted to buy apples of X variety and I got to the supermarket and those apples looked crap I just wouldn't buy them, I would buy some other fruit or come back another day.
However online, if I ordered x and they have in stock then they have to fulfil that order, even if the apples look like crap.
I am not really sure you could improve this unless you had some form of back and forth comms between you and the warehouse.
Cheap brands might have lower standards than premium brands. The company makes sure the stores uphold the quality standards, and stop selling through stores that hurt their brand.
Hmm, apart from the "but sometimes...", your comment did make me realise that this might be a reason why it's more viable: produce that is fine but would get left behind in the supermarket (e.g. curved cucumbers, the last crop of lettuce, ...) would no longer have to be thrown away but actually gets bought.
If you're in the US, and within 15 minutes of a Costco or other similar wholesale store, I cannot imagine paying someone to do that legwork would be cheap enough to be worth it for anyone who is mobile and has a car. My kids also love going to the grocery store and interacting with people. But mostly, labor is very expensive, and if I am doing grocery shopping for fruits and vegetables and dairy (which I want to pick myself), then the rest of grocery is 100 feet away so I might as well do that too and not pay someone else to do it.
Recently in larger cities in EU there's been a sudden rise of "10 minutes delivery"-style apps like Gorillas, Flink or Getis. These companies are more like food delivery.
That's a pretty judgmental view for the service. Try these for B:
- a mother with limited transport options
- a disabled person
- a covid isolating person, or generally a person not feeling well and not wanting to infect others
- someone with surprise visitors coming next day, trying to fit in shopping, organising the house, other tasks
- or simply people like me who make a choice between spending an hour a week doing grocery shopping, or spending that time with family. (Although I get an option for pickup rather than delivery so I'm going with that)
Groceries are just another commodity sold online. And the "value added" is not exactly tiny.
Your assumption that home delivery does not add much value compared to driving to a mall and carrying your purchased stuff back home rests on a lot of assumptions:
a) you can drive and have a working car at your disposal,
b) you have no other duties, such as caring for young kids or a bedridden person, or you can afford paid help,
c) you are fit enough to carry the stuff you bought,
d) you are not contagious, or you trust your immune system enough to interact with contagious strangers; this is not just a covid thing, even a "good" flu season has some mortality,
e) there even is a suitable mall in your proximity.
And another perspective: maybe driving to a mall and back is virtuous in your book, but it almost certainly isn't as eco-friendly as home delivery. A small truck carrying groceries for 20 families does not burn anywhere as much gas as 20 families driving their sedans to the mall and back home. Its route will be more efficient and only one living person, the driver, is being carried around by the car, not 20+.
Also, there are so many grocery stores (where I live at least, and in all suburban US areas I've been in), that you must be driving by one at some point in the week. The transportation costs are nil, so the only difference is the time you spend in the grocery store. Which is also very low if you're familiar with the store.
Therefore, the only missing variable is how much you trust the worker that is walking around picking things up, and for me, that is very little, especially if there is a price premium with picking up a grocery order.
I don't see why it has to be viewed in terms of such extremes. It's just a simple calculation of B's time versus their money. B is probably an actual human being too, so would need to drive to the store and back themselves. Maybe they prefer not to. The entire economy works this way.
I have been using this heavily because we moved during the pandemic, and IKEA only offered such a pick up service (called "Click&Collect" in Germany). A supermarket here also offers such a service. It is extremely convenient and time-saving. Previously, a trip to IKEA usually took an entire afternoon, which is tiring especially if you have children. With "Click&Collect", you spend 30-60 minutes on your couch, reading product reviews, and you can directly measure whether some piece of furniture fits into your apartment. Pickup then usually took 5-10 minutes, everything is already on carts, you just have to load it into your car.
Especially for groceries where you presumably don’t have your own refrigerated van.
We're a family of four, and we do get home-delivered groceries weekly now after a year of Covid and really trying to minimize time spent in stores. Doing the order is easily an hour's worth of clicking, checking fridge/freezer/pantry/elsewhere for what we need, trying to remember if we missed something or if there is some non-food item that we can get delivered at the same time (think diapers, paper towels, toothpaste, whatever) and so on.
Fast food delivery we never do, it's way too expensive for the value-add, and just way more rare as a thing (buying fast food, that is). When we buy pre-made food (WFH lunches when kids are at preschool), we always to go and get it ourselves.
Here, warehouse stores do them - meaning someone doesn't run around the store looking for products. The same person might get 15 boxes of cereal for 15 different orders and put one in each bag - rather than one person pick the entire order. The stores are profitable and tonnes of people do this. Anecdotally 100% of the people I know rely on this, with maybe 10% of those people being in tech.
We also have an entire industry of two grocery chains where people do their own shopping, take full carts (unpaid) to the back and then have the items delivered later, which allows people to take public transit, amongst other things.
It can mean I am lazy, or I can use that time to do some other work I enjoy. Doesn't matter, because I don't really care if someone random judges me as lazy.
I also order in all my food and hire a cleaner for my home once a month. I don't own a car, I either rent a car using apps or order a taxi.
All of this has won me so much money and time. Some of the most valuable things for me besides other elements like health.
So for me it is astounding how someone can't see value in those things. I am so thankful for these things and services existing, every day. They have given me so much time to do whatever I want.