The Rise of the Dark Supermarket
Mar. 3rd, 2022 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutThere have been a ton of articles, especially in tech press, but generally, about “dark stores” in cities. These are essentially replacing “leave your apartment, go down to the corner store, buy wtf” with “go on a website, order wtf, have it delivered from the corner dark store probably on a bicycle”. Obviously, this had led to a shift in traffic patterns (instead of people walking out of their homes, down to the shop and back, there are bicyclists doing back and forths from shop to the homes). Also, almost as soon as this phenomenon arose, it was supplemented with broader grocery delivery from more traditional (Whole Foods, etc.) grocers. So, not just a pint of ice cream and chips, but days worth of food. Kozmo vs HomeGrocer for Olds like me.
Anyone who has been to a grocery store in the last few years has seen the rise of the Shopper. Not people shopping for themselves, but people fulfilling orders for the store Shopping service, or DoorDash or Instacart or whatever. A typical interaction after R. has gone to Roche is for me to ask him questions like, “What’s the ratio of Shoppers looking like?” I almost don’t need to explain it any more.
A natural progression would seem to be — NO, I DIDN’T THINK OF IT ON MY OWN EITHER! — the Dark Supermarket. In person shoppers do sometimes complain about the Shoppers in their grocery store, especially as there are more of them. It obeys the usual 30% rule: once 30% of the group is The Different People, the “regular people” freak out and engage in tactics to get rid of them entirely because They Are Taking Over. Obviously, grocery chains don’t want to lose their “regular shoppers” to the Shoppers, and they have made and are implementing Plans. Since the convert-“regular” store-in-city-to-dark-store didn’t go so well, they are scratch building Dark Supermarkets. They don’t call them that. That would be entirely too awesome, and these are grocery chains. Grocery chains don’t do awesome.
https://www.supermarketnews.com/online-retail/kroger-reaches-pennsylvania-new-ocado-e-commerce-center
“Customer Fulfillment Center”, “Automated Warehouse”, “e-Commerce center” — these are all floating around out there as terms for this phenomenon. And yes, Kroger is planning on using this as a way to extend their tentacles into regions they do not yet have in-person grocery shopping operations. Kroger is doing this via a deal with Ocado, which has been around a lot longer than I would have expected (2000).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocado_Group
And Ocado appears to be genuinely trying to do what WebVan once attempted. Their robots aren’t just software.
I don’t know what to think about any of this, honestly. There will likely be another post that goes on for pages and pages about my various nascent Thoughts about … food shopping and distribution and wtf. But I will spare you that here, at least.
Anyone who has been to a grocery store in the last few years has seen the rise of the Shopper. Not people shopping for themselves, but people fulfilling orders for the store Shopping service, or DoorDash or Instacart or whatever. A typical interaction after R. has gone to Roche is for me to ask him questions like, “What’s the ratio of Shoppers looking like?” I almost don’t need to explain it any more.
A natural progression would seem to be — NO, I DIDN’T THINK OF IT ON MY OWN EITHER! — the Dark Supermarket. In person shoppers do sometimes complain about the Shoppers in their grocery store, especially as there are more of them. It obeys the usual 30% rule: once 30% of the group is The Different People, the “regular people” freak out and engage in tactics to get rid of them entirely because They Are Taking Over. Obviously, grocery chains don’t want to lose their “regular shoppers” to the Shoppers, and they have made and are implementing Plans. Since the convert-“regular” store-in-city-to-dark-store didn’t go so well, they are scratch building Dark Supermarkets. They don’t call them that. That would be entirely too awesome, and these are grocery chains. Grocery chains don’t do awesome.
https://www.supermarketnews.com/online-retail/kroger-reaches-pennsylvania-new-ocado-e-commerce-center
“Customer Fulfillment Center”, “Automated Warehouse”, “e-Commerce center” — these are all floating around out there as terms for this phenomenon. And yes, Kroger is planning on using this as a way to extend their tentacles into regions they do not yet have in-person grocery shopping operations. Kroger is doing this via a deal with Ocado, which has been around a lot longer than I would have expected (2000).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocado_Group
And Ocado appears to be genuinely trying to do what WebVan once attempted. Their robots aren’t just software.
I don’t know what to think about any of this, honestly. There will likely be another post that goes on for pages and pages about my various nascent Thoughts about … food shopping and distribution and wtf. But I will spare you that here, at least.