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Comment by skhr0680 | Hacker News Reader

“Weekly” is the keyword. I live in a city where it’s normal to go shopping every 1-2 days, and city bikes have a basket that will fit that amount of groceries. It’s not as inconvenient as it sounds because there is usually a grocery store within walking and definitely one within biking distance.

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>I live in a city where it’s normal to go shopping every 1-2 days

>It’s not as inconvenient as it sounds because there is usually a grocery store within walking and definitely one within biking distance.

I've lived exactly what you are describing and I would not go back to it given the option.

There's a pretty substantial opportunity cost difference between shopping weekly and shopping every couple days. That's time you could spend doing other things you actually want to do. And if the store that's on your way is in a prime location then there is probably a monetary cost too.

Edit: Since I'm apparently wrong would anyone care to point out my error?

Time is spent on going to a grocery store in a car too. That's also a substantial cost. With proper urban planning, it wouldn't be a PITA to shop for grocery since it will be close to you.

But it's not like you can't shop weekly with a bike too. Cargo bikes can carry more grocery than usual. Coupled with electric assist, it shouldn't be too bad.

Oh, it's definitely possible to shop weekly, especially with a modern e-bike. I used to do it with a big backpack and a shitty walamrt bike when I lived in the city because the good (read: cheap) grocery store was inconveniently located.

I just take issue with the lunacy that adding an extra errand and the associated overhead, even if it's just a stop on your way home, doesn't have a cost.

It is actually less of bother or time suck then weekly/bi-weekly car trip. You typically stop by in the way home from work in smaller store where you can pop in/out super quick. It also requires less organizing and planning.

Weekly/bi-weekly car trip is something like 2-3 hours of your time.

The other bonuses are that sometimes you just send kids to fetch bread or whatever.

Stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work added about 20-30 minutes to my commute every day of the week, which got to be enough of a hassle I bought my own grocery cart and now walk to the store with it once every 1-2 weeks - and that trip is typically only around 50 minutes. Nearly half of it is just walking to/from the store, so I expect a car would be even less time.

It's not nearly as straightforward as everyone here wants to make it.

For me, it definitely is not 30 min. It is 10-15 and I am not in hurry at all.

This assumes that the end your work day ends far before the store closes in ordre for you to be sure its open when you get there.

Anyone working until 5 or 6, or anyone working with flexible hours will not have that luxury since store typically close at 6 and any delay in your commute back home means not being able to get food for the evening.

It is nice that you can afford to do that - reliably - but there are significant constraints on your working hours and your reponsibilities that you need to sort out first before switching to this approach, and not everyone is in that position.

Weekly shopping (car trip) is literally 40 minutes for me (3 person family).

The whole thread just shows how different we all are.

Unless you're cooped up in your home every day you'll cycle past a grocery store on your way home from something else, so you can easily pop in an grab what you need. You also don't spend any time thinking and planning what you're going to eat a whole week in advance, only to forget some core ingredient for the 5th meal and then have to drive to the store again (or order takeout and let the rest sit til next week only to have it go off before you get around to cooking it).

>Unless you're cooped up in your home every day

That actually seems pretty plausible given that WFH is normalized now. Sure, you might still leave the house to eat out or whatever, but it seems pretty inconvenient to also pick up groceries in those cases.

Wanting to continue working from home rather than commuting is actually strongly correlated with driving (and longer commutes). 91% of bicycle commuters miss some aspects of the commute; ~40% miss it a lot, whereas 55% of car commuters don't miss it at all. Unsurprisingly the main aspect missed was the activity of commuting itself (53%). Cycling to work is like a free gym membership and a free trip to stores rolled into your commute.

Reference (N=1014): https://urbanstudies.uva.nl/content/blog-series/covid-19-pan...

I've recently been heading into the office pretty often due to noisy home renovation works and can relate - I love my mostly-bike-path commute. But for embarrassing reasons I chose to take a car during peak hour yesterday and it was truly a horrible experience. I don't mind moving "slowly" (and note that in most cases within 15km of home my average travel speed on a bike is better than in a car) but being stuck behind unmoving traffic for what seems like interminable periods of time is just incredibly stressful and frustrating.

> Unless you're cooped up in your home every day you'll cycle past a grocery store on your way home from something else, so you can easily pop in an grab what you need.

It's more expensive to buy in small daily quantities though. It'd be cheaper to buy in bulk and only go once a month or so.

For non-perishable goods sure. Buy those in bulk (based on your storage capacity) and have them delivered. Buying highly perishable items once a week tends to result in a fair bit of wastage unless you're a whizz at meal planning. For one thing, I've yet to come across bread with genuine flavour and perfect texture that lasts more than 3 days.

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