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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

It the late 90s a technology professional calmly explained to me that nobody would ever do their supermarket shopping online because they would not able to select fruit and vegetables by hand to look for the 'good' ones

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And he was right. Still going to the market myself for the veggies.

What are you talking about? I see a large number of grocery store employees gather up wares for curbside or delivery every time I go to the supermarket. All of my area supermarkets have dedicated sections for these ways of shopping!

And then on top of that the popularity of meal kits as well supplanting some amount of grocery shopping.

And any discussion about those meal kits is full of people complaining about low quality produce, and many of them quitting their subscription because of it.

Because when the grocery store employee picks the fruit for you online order they don’t care about getting the ripe ones with no blemishes.

Additionally they seem to always pick the perishables with the closest expiry date. IE milk from the front of the shelf that is expiring tomorrow rather than the stuff at the back that has 7 days before expiry.

I wonder how instacart became a 12 billion dollar company even though you go to the market for 'the veggies'.

I guess many people make do with mountain dew and pringles.

You can dismiss it if you want, but the truth is that what you said is not correct. People get groceries delivered all the time and that includes fruits and vegetables.

What they didn't anticipate was how many people don't buy fruits or vegetables.

Plus how many of us are willing to buy 2x as many as needed, assuming some will be bad, and just chalk that up to the cost of not going to the store.

Or how many of us understand that an "ugly" tomato is just fine to eat, especially when I'm making a sauce.

The obsession with perfect produce is so dumb, and has genuinely harmed our shopping.

Oh I’m fine with imperfect produce. But Instacart frequently brings me really terrible specimens, like strawberries with mold literally yesterday (the second batch was fine, and I would have eaten both if they were both good).

The grocery store should be pulling terribly produce, but my local one apparently does not.

Context: Not sure what its like in the US but in the UK supermarket deliveries including all kinds of loose fruit and veg are very common

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