Kroger's Digital Struggle
joshstrange.com
joshstrange.com
And it's even worse in the delivery app subcategory. Why bother with that tech when Instacart etc are losing 3 dollars for every dollar they bring in? Seems like best case scenario you get to sell to their customers at full price and Instacart shareholders pay for delivery fees.
https://www.wesh.com/article/kroger-central-florida/38508663
Kroger delivers groceries to Central Florida without opening a single store
1. The Kroger sign on doesn't work with Firefox, so the in-app Kroger SSO thing doesn't work for me. I had to temporarily switch my browser to chrome to log in.
2. They changed the pickup method from sms to in-app. Problem is that not everybody who does curb-side pickup is the same person who has the app installed and logged in. I used to have my wife order and I could confirm presence for pickup from my phone (even a different number!). Now I need to tell my wife to log in, press the button, and tell her what stall I'm parked at.
Both of these didn't used to be a problem as of about a year ago, these are recent regressions in functionality.
Same company who avoided Apple Pay for years to push their ridiculous Kroger Pay.
HomeDepot and the USPS both will send me an email receipt and they remember my address when I put in a credit card.
The supermarket, on the other hand, needs your loyalty info first, to decide whether to give you the "sale" price on a bunch of things, and to also redeem coupons. Not only is this convenient, so you can see and confirm expected prices as things ring up, but importantly, your loyalty situation will obviously change the total.
I guess this could be done by authing the worst-case amount and then capturing only the amount you really owe after any "savings" -- but ohhhh boy I can already imagine how many people would be using debit cards and be FREAKED OUT that "Kroger put a hold on my account for more than my grocery bill!!"
> When the terminal is ready to read your credit card, it has a total 'in mind' already at every place I've ever shopped.
Only the cheap ones. At Costco I put in and remove my cedit card before they scan anything at all, then when they are done I tell them "already entered it". And the transaction goes through. It's way faster than waiting for the total.
I'm actually annoyed when I go to a store that makes me wait till the total is ready - I'd rather enter the card while the clerk is ringing up my items, and have my hands free and ready to go the second they scan the last time.
At scale, on demand grocery delivery introduces significant efficiency which probably offsets whatever the reliance on impulse buys.
Perhaps the disconnect is his belief that "what I do know is technology and UI/UX." Perhaps he really believes he knows how to build technology like this. But his complaints are those of a person who clearly only thinks of technology, as technology. Not as the stupid redneck in Arkansas who needs to use a shitty mobile connection in order to find out if diapers are on sale yet; but as the lofty technologist, surveying the digital landscape from his 100-gigabit 16-cpu latest-generation pocket powerhouse, flicking through content faster than it can render, concluding that the technological marvel of dreary old-world tech to be wanting.
The poor fools! They don't understand what I, a technology UI/UX expert, want in a mobile app! How foolish that they have not implemented what their competition has. It can only be incompetence. Not to worry though. I, the technological wunderkind, will write a blog post. I will educate them on their shortcomings, and inform them of the correct path to profitability. It's my duty to help these poor sods realize the truth: that they are not yet advanced enough. But with my help, they'll get there.
I used to use it to plan lists, but now I go straight to paper and only use it to look up sales and tag e-coupons.
And that's the key. There isn't any competition. Instacart and shipt aren't competition. You are still buying groceries from your local Kroger brand. What it would take to push for real improvement is if another grocery store had an app that was enough better than Kroger's that people preferred to shop at that store instead of Kroger's.
I’ve given up on using 1st party grocery store website/app.
I just use Instacart or Shipt now instead, due to better UI/UX.
Which is sad for the grocery store because it creates a situation of they become a nameless supplier & you longer have loyalty/affinity anymore.
I will also say that technology is more than just the website/app - it is also their supply chain and how they run the stores.
Whoooooooooooooooooole bunch of people work at a whooooooooooooole bunch of places you've never heard of, man. There are so very many companies out there that employ programmers... it's nice if you can get a big Silicon Valley Darling on your resume, but not many folks can, so prestige isn't all that important.
- Kroger
No, groceries aren't sexy. But everyone needs to eat, and Kroger will be around long after all of the stupid startups these SWE grads choose to work for have died.
And quite frankly, what Kroger is offering would have been considered a decent, even good, starting salary before the COVID tech hiring froth warped tech employees' salary expectations.
Back in 1992(!) they rolled out a smart-cart system that I can't find any references to because its new (2021) release dominates the SEO.
It was an LCD tablet mounted to the cart that would let you look items up, see a map of the store, and (I think?) play trivia games. I think they showed ads too when idle IIRC.
If you knew to look for them, there were stalactite-looking antennas hanging from the ceiling in a grid pattern all over the store to do triangulation.
It was pretty nifty until they stopped maintaining it.
The reality is that lots of different industries employ software engineers, and many/most of those industries are doing really cutting-edge and interesting things, often much more interesting than your standard SV-style software company.
Seems they want to pay folks < 100K onsite in LA? And only marginally more in Seattle?
Combine that with the fact the vast majority of jobs are hybrid in what appears to be middle of nowhere Ohio(Blue Ash, correct me if I'm wrong I'm looking at a map), I can take a few guesses as to why.
I had an interview at Kroger HQ out of college and it was probably the most depressing office building I had ever been in. That combined with the type of work encountered at legacy industry bigco and it has to be hard to recruit anyone decent. (This coming from someone who is wildly inept, too :D)
Their analytics company 84.51/dunnhumby was always the flashier option that could recruit at a national level.
Proximity to the airport isn't really a big deal -- the airport isn't even in Ohio and is far away from literally everything. City center isn't a big deal -- that's more important for night life, and it's a pain to get in and out of. Believe it or not, Blue Ash has always felt way more accessible to me than downtown.
The most "happening" shopping center in Cincinnati right now is Kenwood, which is right next to Blue Ash -- overall located near far better retail biomes than downtown. Not everything in Cincinnati is going on in the suburbs (downtown and Newport have seen a big resurgence in years of late), but the north suburbs (like Sharonville, Blue Ash, Fairfield, Kenwood) are still some of the more "up" places in the city.
They seem to be optimized for discarding the best candidates. It's comical.
I wrote about the same service a decade ago[0]. Just re-read it and there has been progress!
Walmart just quietly tracked everyone in their computers without so much backlash.
I see a difference here.
https://throwlasso.com for anyone that's interested. It's completely free. Product feedback welcomed.
For now. That will probably change if the deal for Kroger to purchase them goes through. It's getting more and more difficult to avoid shopping at a Kroger store.