David Livingston, a grocery industry analyst based in Wisconsin, questioned whether grocery pickup will become widespread.
“If you’re going to go to the store, you might as well go grocery shopping,” Livingston said. “What’s the difference?”
It $aves time if you have the money.
Companies across the country have tried out delivery and pickup options every few years, Livingston said, but neither option has proved especially popular. Even Walmart — among the nation’s largest grocers — has only tested grocery delivery in a couple of markets, and it hasn’t attempted grocery pickup at all, despite providing site-to-store shipping for other retail items for years.
Indeed, the vast majority of people still get their groceries the old-fashioned way.
First the pop-ups, now this! It's the death of Internet shopping!
On one recent evening in Quincy, dozens of shoppers came and left the store while Stop & Shop employee Nicholas Clayton, who staffs the pickup booth outside, waited between customers.
The intrepid investigators of the Boston Globe are on the case!
At some of its stores, Stop & Shop keeps a separate “wareroom” where employees do the shopping for pickup customers. At the wareroom in Watertown one recent afternoon, Kacey Porter was zipping up and down the aisles, reading grocery lists off a wrist-worn gadget and packing items into green plastic totes.
“When you’re doing an order, sometimes you can tell who it’s going to be for,” Porter said. She tries to form mental pictures of customers from clues such as cat food and Oreos. She can fill a typical order in around 10 minutes.
“I’m fast,” Porter said....
Better check your order before leaving the store, especially if you ordered fruit or eggs.
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And now there will be a business record of what you ordered to be sent to the advertisers and the NSA, even though they already log all the stuff when you go through checkout with your savings card.
