I strongly believe personalized nutrition and shopping experiences will have major impact on non communicable diseases.
The web apps for grocery shopping have carousels that might showcase to you two or three new items, but there simply is nothing analogous to aisle walking. You can't even really see the full inventory in these web apps either. To me, that's a huge discoverability issue that doesn't yet present because people have prior experience shopping IRL.
[0] Not by choice, a combination of Necrotizing Fasciitis, Sepsis, and Gangrene left me in a wheelchair
It's like they search out for the least ripe or most bruised thing. Seems like it's because it's not for them so they don't care, or they don't know how to.
The other point against that theory is people will buy what they want to buy, that may be healthy food, it may not be.
Unless you're talking about taking away the choice and distributing food based on some sort of consortium which is authoritarian and assumes we have sound dietary science which is false.
On the money point, have you seen the fees these personal shopping services add? In no way is it cheaper to have someone else shop for you.
How bad is it when WalMart is treating its employees better than most?
I work with a number of people that have an irrational hate-boner for Walmart for the reasons stated yet they are all Prime members.
Frankly, unless I'm drunk, stoned, or sick, I can't see ever using a non-store delivery service.
What about all the poor people without smartphones? We have such an unequal distribution of wealth and technology in this county that (particularly on site like this with mostly digital natives) it is easy to loose sight of the fact that the poorest ~20% still don't have basic smart phones, or maybe even basic flip phones. Hell they might not even have email accounts.
One thing that has been made clear by all the social programs that were stood up during the pandemic is that landlines and snail mail are still the most common denominator of communication for the poor. Until we get to some simple "smartphones for all" program, I don't see this changing any time soon.
Poor people have smartphones. Even poor people in developing nations are likely to have smartphones. Basic smartphones are ultra cheap commodities.
Some poor people have smartphones. I guess some will get to eat. Also while there is penatration of smartphones into poorer countries, it is hardly 100%
>However, compared to other markets across the globe, India’s smartphone penetration rate is still relatively low. [1]
[1] https://www.statista.com/topics/4600/smartphone-market-in-in...
I have no idea how you got from "smartphone apps will affect how people shop for food" to "anyone without a smartphone will be starved."
What a rosy view of grocery stores. I used to work in grocery and later a "dark grocery" store. It ain't all puppies and sunshine, sonny. Grocery apps are engineered to hoover up your data and entice you to spend more money, especially on things you normally like to buy. Average ticket size is higher on pickup orders over in store shopping. These apps definitely enable junk food habits with targeted discounts and advertising. Trying to subsist on a diet? Here's a free gallon or $0.99 5-gallon tub of ice cream. Good luck with that diet.
Source: I worked for Kroger for over a decade in every department.
But, assuming altruistic grocers, it would be interesting to see how they decide what food to steer people towards. Would I have to share my medical records and height/weight/exercise routine or would they personalize based on something else?
Rather than thinking about tech solutions for the health epidemic surrounding foods, I think we need to reign in the prepackaged food industry who relies on unnatural recipes to cut costs and increase shelf life and who adds tons of sugar to everything for flavor.
Apps silently tacking $0.10/lb onto produce because you own an iPhone and have a history of buying "premium" stuff...
There's some interesting reporting on the various optimizations like all the isle being half width and one way to save floor space, or they don't put like items together so all the different ketchup brands (for example) are distrusted throughout the store so if it tells a picker to go to isle 5 shelf W and get heinz ketchup, there won't be any other similar items/brands near the heinz ketchup to confuse the picker with. They also arrange the stores in roughly descending weight so that heavy things go in first and light/fragile at the end.
A. Dark Stores / Fulfillment Centers Instant-Delivery Apps operate their own dark stores / fulfillment centers, typically one per neighborhood they operate in. Since these are not meant for consumers, space can be used more efficiently and typically the cost to operate these (at scale) as a percent of revenue is lower than rent space for grocery stores.
https://tanay.substack.com/p/understanding-the-instant-deliv...