It may be the opposite -- if you live in a city with amazon fresh, the prices are about the same as the grocery store. Various amazon sales/credits (and cashback from an amazon credit card) usually offset the delivery price. If you live somewhere where they fulfill whole foods, then those prices are the same as well.
FWIW I live in a city and don't have a ton of storage space, so getting bulk prices from a warehouse store is impractical. TP and Paper towels come on subscribe and save and are cheaper than the corner store, and roughly the same as the grocery store.
I still shop in person most of the time because I like to pick my produce and the substitutions tend to be a mess, but delivery is great when things are busy or we want a bigger order.
I've always wondered if that was a regional variance. Since I live in Texas, I assume the prices of our grocery store staples are cheaper than they would be in, say, downtown New York City.
But if I lived in a more urban, city environment, where easy parking isn't a given and picking up groceries in a car is more a hassle, then the time savings of having Amazon deliver for close to the same price that I would pay in store is much more worth it.
Do you live in a weird area? Like very remote or extremely low density or something? Or are you just upper class? I would assume getting all your groceries delivered from amazon would be significantly more expensive than buying them from a supermarket.
If you're not using Amazon, it depends how close you live to the store. A supermarket delivery truck should drive fewer miles making 10 deliveries than those 10 people would driving to the store. Some supermarkets here will also deliver in reusable crates rather than bags. Most have offered same or next day delivery for years.
I don't know any supermarket that would let you order just paper towels though...
Having moved somewhere not near a delivery point or a lot of large stores, the convenience of same-day Amazon Prime is hard to beat.
If you can afford the markup on their groceries, Amazon Fresh in Seattle's delivery can occur in less than 12 hours (sometimes <6). The only thing that's kept me from using Fresh as a utility is price. Local grocery stores still win on price.
If you're laid up in bed and can't leave the house, Fresh is awesome.
Personally I use a combination of online delivery and going to the supermarket in person. When I need some stuff right now, I visit the store. When I’m bulk buying long life stuff, especially large and heavy things, delivery makes more sense and in my area costs only $2.
I'd guess that that one's down to increased usage of grocery delivery services, rather than logistical optimization.
If you've got a Whole Foods and a less-upmarket grocery store equally far from you, you're gonna get your staple foods from the less-upmarket store, and just go to the Whole Foods for the things only they carry.
But if you're making an online order with a fixed-overhead delivery fee from Whole Foods, you're not going to make a separate online order with a fixed-overhead delivery fee from the less-upmarket store; so you're going to end up ordering the staple foods from Whole Foods, too.
I could be totally off base here, but couldn't people without access to a good grocery store just buy their groceries online and have them delivered? Does it cost more to have groceries shipped?
I understand Co-Op's offer more cheaply priced groceries and that's a great community project so I'm not suggesting Co-Op's have no point. They're great things. I'm just wondering what the difference between big box grocery stores and online grocery delivery is?
Grocery delivery is cheaper because they save on real estate costs. (You can keep most of your stock in a warehouse with only a small area for walk-in service.)
This is already happening where I live, because it makes economic sense. (They can sell upscale and more varied groceries without paying for upscale real estate.)
Considering that Grocery Gateway (services parts of metropolitan Toronto; has a website and mobile app; is owned by a nationwide premium grocery store chain in the country) charges $10/order, you'd make it up if you ordered groceries every week.
If you don't order that often, the margins probably aren't high enough that Amazon can afford to service you.
Same here, although delivery in a 4-hour block costs around $2 or so for me (I think the cost goes to zero if I order like $150 or more of stuff). But it is worth it.
I (intentionally) don't have a car, and I like buying certain staples (like toilet paper and detergent) in bulk, so having Safeway do the delivery is great. They use their recyclable plastic bags, which I can either reuse, or return to the driver (though that doesn't refund the ~¢2 bag feee); those bags are put into plastic bins (the kind you see when doing a corporate move), which are then put on a cart (my building has an elevator).
So yeah, for scheduled stuff, Safeway delivery is vastly preferable to Amazon (or even Instacart).
I lived close to a grocery store downtown, walking distance, but I still used an online grocery service for a significant portion of my groceries. I'd get a monthly delivery of non perishable or large/heavy items such as toilet paper, paper towels, canned food, milk bags (this is Canada), frozen food, juice, pasta, etc, etc.
Having to carry large/heavy items without a car was annoying so the service was a great help.
Basically I'd walk to the store for fresh meat, deli meat, cheese and fruit/vegetables. Everything else I'd just order online. The great part of the online store is I could reorder the same list without having to pick each one out again, with some small modifications usually, so it saved a bunch of time.
It was also cheaper on a frequent basis when using the online service. The grocery stores downtown usually have a premium price on everything.
Online grocery delivery is still only in limited, typically wealthy areas and is still more expensive. I think it also caters to people buying higher priced items such as more expensive meat or seafood, where the cost of delivering it is a small percentage of the value. Let's assume for a box filled with $5 and $10 items such as chicken, steak, coffee, etc that the delivery cost is $0.25 or $0.50 per item... that might not be a big deal for people here. But say you're buying boxes of $1.00 Rice in a box, or cans of beans and the cost of delivery makes a bigger difference in your cost per meal.
Items sold in online grocery services are also marked up higher than they are in stores, for example: "Celeste Frozen Pizza is 99-cents at ShopRite, $1.29 at Peapod and a whopping $2.69 at FreshDirect"(source: http://6abc.com/archive/8983520/)
It also assumes that people can be home for the delivery, neighborhoods like this might not be the type where you want $50 to $100 worth of groceries sitting outside your apartment building.
Making the actual payment is another thing to consider. Not everyone has credit or debit cards. It looks like online grocery sellers also can't legally accept EBT, Wic or other food programs for online grocery delivery: https://www.facebook.com/notes/peapod-delivers/why-we-dont-a...
Online groceries require planning, time, and at least for the foreseeable future will come at a premium cost. It's great for certain people but I hope it does not become the only option for groceries.
Where I live in LA, the only grocery store in reasonable walking distance is a Whole Foods. It's actually cheaper for me to use a grocery delivery service for basics like milk, eggs, and produce every week than it is for me to buy the equivalents from Whole Foods. Delivery services are a no-brainer in my situation.
(I do use a particular delivery service that has direct relationships with farmers, so that could partially explain why it's so cheap.)
You may see Amazon lockers in them, but that's probably the sum of it. Beyond that Whole Foods is just a perfect way to establish a delivery service: high prices and large footprint.
Grocery delivery in the UK is amazing! I wish it was like this everywhere. All the major chains have professional websites, nice trucks, cheap service. Delivery prices range from about £3.00 to £6.00 depending on the time of day.
Sadly, I'm moving to Canada where grocery delivery is nearly non existent. I hope amazon solves my problems there.
I don't think the urban/suburban divide really covers it, though. I live in a city, in a neighborhood with an okay amount of local retail, but I still order a lot of stuff online and have it delivered.
I usually get my groceries delivered. It saves me an hour of driving to the grocery store, shopping, paying, driving home, and making several trips up and down four flights of stairs to bring the items home. I'm totally happy to pay a delivery charge and a tip to not have to deal with that. Yes, I do walk to the local grocery if I just need a couple items, but I usually do a larger delivery grocery order around once a month.
Neighborhood stores can't stock everything, especially in a city where space is expensive. Looking through my last 3 months of Amazon orders (24 orders), I see only three items that I could have gotten by walking somewhere locally, and they were all things that were part of a larger order that was mostly stuff I could not get locally. And that's just Amazon; I definitely have purchases from other online retailers over the past three months, and for the most part I'd guess they're all things I couldn't get within walking distance either.
My neighborhood shines when it comes to restaurants, bars, parks, and personal services (hair cuts, mani/pedi, that sort of thing). A good variety of groceries are available within walking distance, and even some more exotic stuff (there's a high-end cake bakery a couple blocks away, for example), but otherwise most regular purchases aren't easily fulfilled with a short walk. Most of those other purchases would require a 45-60 minute bus ride, or a 15-20 minute drive (with no guarantee of finding what I want). And if I need to do that, I'll probably just order it online instead.
I do agree that the situation isn't ideal. I generate a lot of cardboard and paper recycling waste, though fortunately not that much plastic. I'm not sure about fuel usage: if I have to drive somewhere to buy something, it might be a wash compared to a delivery vehicle bringing it to me. And the package theft problem (and the "solutions") we've created for ourselves is ridiculous.
In Seattle we have Amazon Fresh, which is home grocery delivery. I can generally get next-day delivery, so I can order groceries and anything else they have in the local warehouse (books, movies, whatever) and have it sitting on my doorstep by 6am the next day.
I can't imagine living my life without it. Seriously.
FWIW I live in a city and don't have a ton of storage space, so getting bulk prices from a warehouse store is impractical. TP and Paper towels come on subscribe and save and are cheaper than the corner store, and roughly the same as the grocery store.
I still shop in person most of the time because I like to pick my produce and the substitutions tend to be a mess, but delivery is great when things are busy or we want a bigger order.
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