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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

The online grocery stat really surprises me. Relative to pre-pandemic? OK, seems high but I can buy it that a lot of people tried it and some liked it enough to keep it. But YoY from February, at a time when grocery prices have increased a fair bit, is almost hard to believe. "Grocery prices are up so lets make them go up even more for a bit of convenience."

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IMO, that growth makes sense given:

1. Lower friction because more stores offer free/cheap delivery with decent CX (maybe also wider SNAP acceptance?)

2. Higher opportunity cost for low-income shoppers because of labor market gains (maybe also higher gas prices?)

3. Lingering wariness of high-touch public spaces (not sure about this one, but I still see masks here in Seattle)

The pandemic created a big pull-forward in this demand, but it wouldn't surprise me to see the trend continue.

I'm mostly not understanding it relative to early 2022. If someone wasn't using it in February 2022, why now? Yeah, partly a labor market thing. Maybe partly a more people back to offices so don't have as much free time.

My general observation is that not as much changed because of the pandemic as people thought would happen. But grocery delivery is something that does seem to have had gains. (Not sure about food delivery outside of the sort of deliveries that have long existed. And meal kits never really took off even during the pandemic.)

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