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April 29, 2020

Refraction’s “Goldilocks” Size Could Make it Pretty Great for Robot Grocery Delivery

Contactless delivery as a concept, didn’t exist prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The phrase describes the way of delivering food and other goods without humans having to interact with or touch one another.

Delivery robots hold the promise of taking contactless delivery one step further, by removing humans from the equation altogether. Over in Ann Arbor, MI, Refraction.ai launched its robot fleet for restaurant lunch delivery earlier this year, and this month started piloting a grocery delivery service.

Refraction builds the REV-1, an autonomous three-wheeled delivery robot that is ruggedized so that it can handle inclement weather. The company has eight robots rolling through a 3.5 mile radius around Ann Arbor right now making deliveries , with another 15 robots being manufactured.

I first came across Refraction’s grocery work in a WIRED article about the delivery fees Refraction was charging. So I hopped on the phone with Refraction Co-Founder, Ram Vasudevan, to find out more about its grocery program and catch up with the company.

According to Vasudevan, Refraction has partnered with a local grocery store called the Produce Station and has another grocery partner coming online soon. The program is currently being tested and is not yet open to the public, but for now, customers are directed to a special website created by Refraction where they can shop online for food items just as they would from any retailer. A robot is dispatched to the store where a worker there packs it with the order (a REV-1 can hold six grocery bags). The robot is then sent off to the house for delivery with a text message alerting the shopper when the robot has arrived.

The Refraction robot isn’t completely contactless, however. Recipients still need to touch the robot to unlock it, something Vasudevan says the company is working on. Refraction is also looking to add UV lights to the cargo cavity to help with sanitization.

Refraction isn’t the only company that is doing robotic food delivery. Starship’s cooler-sized robots have been doing grocery delivery in Milton Keynes, England, and are now doing restaurant delivery in U.S. cities like Tempe, AZ and Fairfax, VA. And Nuro was given the greenlight by California to start testing its autonomous pod vehicles, which about half the size of a regular car, for deliveries as well.

But one advantage Refraction’s robot may have is its “Goldilocks”-like size. It stands five feet tall and is narrow enough to travel in the bike lanes on roads . This could potentially make it more friendly to city regulators who don’t want their sidewalks clogged with robots. It could also prove more attractive than a pod, because the robot can skooch off to the side to make way for traffic, and have an easier time finding enough space to park.

Vasudevan said that Refraction was “overwhelmed” with interest from restaurants when it launched that delivery option earlier this year. As the company moves past the testing phase, it’s going to have quite a bit of contact with grocers as well.

April 27, 2020

DineMarket is Another (NYC) Restaurant Supplier Marketplace Now Selling to Consumers

One trend emerging from this COVID-19 pandemic is startups that once connected restaurants with food supply companies are pivoting into direct consumers sales. DineMarket is the latest entrant we’ve come across in the category: the company launched its own D2C marketplace earlier this month.

Since 2011, DineMarket had been a service for restaurants to buy food and other supplies from wholesalers in the New York area. As the pandemic spread and New York shut down for sheltering in place, DineMarket changed up its business so consumers can buy and get home delivery from these restaurant suppliers.

DineMarket is the third such restaurant supplier marketplace making this type of shift that we’ve written about in the past month. Both Pepper and Choco offer similar services, also in the New York City area.

It’s not hard to see why so many restaurant-supplier services are making the consumer transition, as it’s a win-win. Suppliers, which can’t sell to restaurants at the moment, open up a new revenue stream, can keep at least some of their people employed and prevent all those perishables from going to waste.

These supplier selling marketplaces also provide another avenue for people to grocery shop online at a time when traditional retailers are struggling to keep up with the sudden crush of new e-commerce orders. Amazon is waitlisting new Fresh and Whole Foods customers, getting a FreshDirect slot in NYC has been like playing the lottery, and Instacart is bringing on another 250,000 of its shoppers nationally to keep up. Adding new sales channels like restaurant suppliers can help ease those strains and provide a means for people to get food delivered.

I’m curious to see what happens with these services once shelter-in-place restrictions are lifted. We’re already seeing restaurants re-open (albeit in a diminished, socially distant capacity) in some parts of the country. New York’s shelter-in-place order expires on May 15, though it will probably be extended for NYC. But if suppliers are finding good money in the consumer market, and consumers get hooked on buying restaurant quality food for their homes, perhaps the divide between B2B and D2C will become more permeable.

April 27, 2020

Online Grocery Demand Up 80-100 Percent At Takeoff’s Robot Fulfilment Centers

Anyone who has tried to order groceries online in the past month knows how backed up the supermarkets are. Amazon has implemented a waitlist for grocery delivery, ShopRite has virtual waiting rooms before you can actually shop for groceries, and Instacart is ratcheting its delivery force up to 750,000 workers to deal with demand.

One thing that could alleviate some of the stress being put on grocery e-commerce is robots, specifically the robotic fulfillment of online orders. Automated fulfillment centers use a series of totes and rails to to gather items for online grocery orders. These fulfillment centers are either built into the back of existing stores, or in standalone facilities.

Robots are ideal for this surge in grocery fulfillment for a few reasons. They are fast, precise, tireless, and, perhaps most important in our pandemic world, they don’t get sick.

Robotic fulfillment is still pretty nascent, with most retailers bringing robotic fulfillment online in just the past year. Given the crush of new e-commerce grocery shoppers and the need to fulfill all those orders, I spoke with Curt Avallone, the Chief Business Officer of Takeoff Technologies by phone last week. Takeoff builds automated fulfillment centers for a number of retailers including Albertsons, Loblaws, Sedano’s, and ShopRite.

“We have nine large grocery chains, six operational units and another 20 under construction,” Avallone told me. “The demand for online grocery is up 80 percent to over 100 percent at our facilities.” Additionally, Avallone said order volume is up. Where the average basket size used to be $150, that number is now pushing up towards $200 since the coronavirus outbreak.

Avallone also said that their current retail partners are ordering more micro-fulfillment centers as grocers anticipate a larger proportion of their business will be online.

“Speed is being requested by most of our retail partners, so they can do a better job of meeting customer demand,” Avallone said.

Takeoff clients are also looking to build more standalone facilities, rather than putting them in the backs of stores. “We still have a lot of facilities being attached,” Avallone said, “but there is a desire to move as quickly as possible. Sometimes standalone is faster.”

Part of the allure of standalone facilities is the ability to locate them away from traffic congestion and closer to major roads for easier routing. They can also be built without any complications from also needing to service in-store customers, and can operate 20 – 22 hours a day, and only require a crew of 12 people.

For retailers looking to add robotic fulfillment, Avallone says that Takeoff’s solution costs $3 – $4 million and takes between 12 and 16 weeks to be operational.

Takeoff isn’t the only company providing robotic fulfillment for retailers. Fabric (formerly Common Sense Robotics) is expanding its presence here in the U.S., Amazon is working with Dematic at its new standalone grocery stores, Kroger is building out standalone facilities powered by Ocado‘s technology, and Alert Innovation is working with Walmart.

With sheltering in place likely to be with us for a while, and at least one study showing that 60 percent of US shoppers are scared to go into grocery stores, online grocery’s sudden surge could become new normal. If so, we’ll need all kinds of tools, including robots, to help fulfill orders and the promise of online grocery shopping.

April 23, 2020

Instacart Now Has 500,000 Shoppers, Adding Another 250,000 to Meet Demand

Instacart appears to be right smack in the middle of a Venn diagram of the humongous demand for online grocery delivery and decimated job market where people need work.

Exactly one month ago Instacart announced that it would add 300,000 new Shoppers (the gig workers who do the shopping and actual delivery) to its ranks over the ensuing three months. Today, the company announced that not only has it already met that goal, bringing its total Shopper count to 500,000, but it is adding another 250,000 Shoppers to keep up with orders.

According to a press announcement emailed to The Spoon, Instacart’s order volume grew by more than 500 percent year-over-year last week, and average customer basket sizes increased by 35 percent. The quarter-million new Shoppers will be focused on 6 main regions with the most demand including California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C. and Toronto.

Grocery retailers and delivery services like Instacart have struggled to keep up with the sheer volume of online grocery orders from people sheltering in place. Actually getting a delivery time can be worth more than gold in some regions of the country, with delivery window only available weeks out. Earlier this month, Instacart added new features like order ahead to help alleviate some of the strain. But ultimately, with stay at home orders seeming like they will be here for a while for most of the country, Instacart just needs people.

This need for more Shoppers also comes at a time when a record number of people are losing their jobs. With restaurants closing along with other non-essential services there are millions of people looking to make some much-needed money. Being a gig worker won’t provide benefits, but it can mean making an income.

It’s important to remember, however, that these eventual 750,000 gig workers are also putting themselves at risk. They are going into the grocery stores and bringing food to the people who won’t leave their own houses for fear of catching the virus.

Along with today’s headcount announcement, the company also announced another round of new COVID-19 protections and services for its Shoppers. Instacart now has a daily in-app Shopper wellness check to monitor health, extended sick pay for workers afflicted with or isolated by COVID-19, extended bonuses for in-store teams until the end of the pandemic, and easier access to health and safety kits.

Instacart’s COVID-19 response record has been mixed at best. Shoppers got so fed up with what they perceived as insufficient protections that they went on strike earlier this month. Though labor relations evidently haven’t stopped people at home from using the service (just make sure you tip generously if you do!).

With more people getting used to shopping for groceries at home, this demand for Instacart could be sustained for some time even beyond the pandemic, requiring hundreds of thousands of more Shoppers.

April 21, 2020

Survey: 60 Percent of US Shoppers “Fearful” of Shopping Inside Grocery Stores

If coronavirus has you a little nervous about buying your food at the actual supermarket, you’re not alone. Results of a new survey from C+R Research shows that 60 percent of American shoppers are “now fearful” to shop at grocery stores, with 73 percent saying they are shopping less at physical stores.

Not surprisingly, C+R’s survey also found that grocery delivery has shot up 3.5x during the pandemic. Whereas consumers used to take an average of 2.3 weekly trips to the grocery store before the COVID-19 outbreak, they now average 1 trip a week.

While we’ve seen previous studies on the surge in online shopping, C+R’s survey highlights the emotional reactions people are having. In addition to being fearful of grocery stores, C+R found that 60 percent of respondents feel a sense of panic or anxiety when shopping, and 45 percent disinfect groceries when they get home.

This is actually completely understandable. Whereas grocery shopping used to be somewhere between fun and banal, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed all that. Aside from forced sheltering in place limiting our non-essential movements, the coronavirus grocery store is a far cry from what is was just a few months ago. Salad and hot bars are removed, workers and shoppers wear masks and gloves and there are plexiglass shields up around cashiers. This dystopian aesthetic, combined with a legitimate fear of catching a deadly virus, should cause a certain amount of fear.

The C+R survey reached 2,012 consumers from March 27 to March 28, 2020 via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. As the pandemic continued domestically throughout the month of April, the question now is how deeply embedded have these fears become and will there be a new normal for grocery shopping? The virus may recede, but how long will its effects last on the way we interact with other people in public? If fear of supermarkets is making online grocery shopping the new normal, perhaps more grocery stores should go dark and just act as fulfillment centers for e-commerce.

People will always need to shop for food, so I’d be curious to see C+R follow up this study on a regular basis to check-in on how people continue to cope with the ever-changing world.

April 20, 2020

Should All Grocery Stores Shift to Delivery and Pickup Only?

It’s been nice to see public sentiment towards grocery workers catch up to the reality of their situation. Grocery workers are on the frontlines of this pandemic, putting themselves at risk to stock shelves, work cash registers and bag groceries to keep stores open and people fed.

But despite new measures like social distancing, limiting the number of customers in-store, and plexiglass shields at checkout, at least 30 grocery store workers have died from COVID-19, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). Another 3,000 have called in sick with coronavirus-like symptoms. As the virus continues to wreak havoc in the U.S., both Grocery Dive and more recently CNN have written pieces asking whether it’s time to close grocery stores to the public and shift them all to delivery and pickup only.

Some stores are already doing this. Whole Foods is converting some of its locations to e-commerce fulfillment only. Amazon was supposed to debut its first full-on grocery store in Woodland Hills, CA last month, but has instead opened it only for online grocery and fulfillment. Kroger has done the same with at least one of its locations in Cincinnati.

Closing grocery stores would definitely help protect grocery workers by limiting their interaction with the public. And as we’ve written about before, warehouse type stores can also benefit shoppers because only grocery store workers, not other people, would interact with the food items.

But closing grocery stores to in-store shoppers on a massive scale just isn’t realistic right now. Grocery retailers are having a hard enough time dealing with the sudden rush in e-commerce, struggling to keep up with demand for delivery and curbside pickup. My local grocery chain doesn’t even have e-commerce, and has been working furiously to build that offering. Even the biggest retailers like Amazon are waitlisting new grocery shoppers, while ShopRite creates virtual waiting rooms before people can actually buy items.

Then there is also the question of who has access to online shopping. Just like the debate around cashierless checkout, the idea of moving everyone over to e-commerce seems to gloss over the large populations of people who are underbanked or don’t have consistently reliable online access. How would they shop?

We are living in complicated and scary times and there are no easy answers, especially as it relates to getting our food. We should be doing all we can to protect grocery store workers, and converting stores to online only would certainly help do that. But from a technological or even logistical standpoint, that just doesn’t seem possible right now.

April 14, 2020

Will Fear of Grocery Contamination Boost Sales of CSAs and Specialized E-Grocers?

I knew it was going to be a great day when I opened up my Twitter feed morning and immediately saw a CNN story about a woman who was arrested for licking $1,800 worth of merchandise at a Safeway store in California. She was purportedly licking jewelry, not food, but there have been multiple other instances of people coughing on and contaminating aisles of food in grocery stores around the country. These stories are heightening our already heightened fears around grocery shopping — and the risk it poses during the coronavirus pandemic.

Those are just stories of people who are contaminating food on purpose. Goods in supermarkets are handled not just by employees but also by perhaps dozens of other shoppers before they make it to your grocery cart. That’s one of the reasons we’re seeing a spike in online grocery delivery sales as well as curbside pickup — contactless delivery programs cut down on the literal touchpoints before food even reaches your home, hopefully lessening the risk of contamination.

All this contamination-mania makes me think that COVID-19 will not only transform how we shop for groceries, but also where we shop for them.

One avenue that could see growth as people take steps to avoid contamination is smaller, more specialized online grocers. These operations, which focus on a more selective array of products, are already seeing a spike in demand. Services like bean marketplace Rancho Gordo and online flour purveyor Maine Grains are selling out or having to delay shipments due to sudden increases in shoppers. Localized grocery delivery services, like Farmstead and SPUD.ca, are also extending delivery hours, waitlisting customers and hiring new staff to try and keep up with the new demand.

Peter van Stolk, CEO of SPUD.ca, told me that one reason these smaller operations are seeing such an increase in demand is that they can “feel safer” than the big box stores.

The key word is “feel.” He noted that, regardless, “the supply chain is the supply chain” — if you buy a box of Annie’s Mac & Cheese from Amazon Fresh or a local e-commerce site, both had to go through the same number of steps (warehouse, distribution center, etc.) to get to the retailer.

SPUD.ca goes to great lengths to ensure the safety of their warehouses — locked doors, gloves and masks, etc. — but Amazon has the same safety measures in place. So if you’re buying foods from established brands, they’ll likely have gone through quite a few (hopefully gloved) hands to reach you, regardless of which store you purchase from.

One thing you can control is whether you purchase from e-commerce services that ship directly from warehouses or from grocery stores. Instacart, for example, uses Shoppers to pick up your groceries from a physical store, meaning all the goods they’re getting are open to contamination from regular old shoppers. Walmart operates in a similar manner, for both delivery and curbside pickup. Services like Amazon Fresh (and Whole Foods), Farmstead, or SPUD.ca, however, fulfill your online orders directly from their warehouses, where all the handlers have to adhere to safety protocol.

Fear over grocery contamination could be one reason that we’re seeing an increase in sales is Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). Food purchased through CSAs often go through significantly fewer hands than food purchase from large grocery chains, which typically travel through warehouses, distribution trucks and more before ending up on your doorstep. The number of touchpoints varies farmer to farmer, but Simon Huntley, CEO of online farm share platform Harvie, told me over the phone that “people have this perception that if they buy from a local farm or retailer there are less hands on their food.”

There are other benefits to buying food sourced nearby, specifically when it comes to produce. Executive Director of ReFed Dana Gunders also noted via email that “another upside to buying local or from a CSA is that the product is typically fresher, so can last longer (thus accommodates less frequent shopping).”

Obviously, even smaller, more localized e-commerce stores are not guaranteed to be COVID-free. As Huntley admitted: “I don’t know if we can prove that it is safe to buy from a local retailer.” They’re also often more expensive, so they won’t be a feasible retail channel for all budgets. And since many of the stores are more specialized or feature a smaller range of products, you’ll still have to turn to your local grocery store (or e-commerce store, or bodega) to get some essentials, like trash bags and hand soap.

But in a time when we’re trying to be as cautious as possible and also support local businesses, trust is more important than ever. With that in mind, COVID-19 could set up smaller, specialized grocery delivery services for a boom — one that could linger even after the pandemic passes.

April 13, 2020

COVID-19 Summit: The Question That Keeps Online Grocers Up at Night

It’s no secret that as the pandemic rages on, more and more consumers are ordering groceries online. But as with everything else right now, circumstances and protocols seem to change minute by minute. As Peter van Stolk, CEO of Canadian sustainable e-commerce grocery store SPUD.ca, put it during our virtual COVID-19 summit last week: “The ground is moving under our feet everyday.”

That sentiment seems to be especially true of grocery. We know that we’re relying on grocery — and grocery delivery — more than ever before to keep ourselves fed while social distancing. But how are grocery stores reinventing themselves to stay relevant, safe, and profitable?

That’s exactly what van Stolk discussed with Phil Lempert of Supermarket Guru at last week’s virtual summit. To keep up with this fresh demand and new safety protocols, grocery retailers — both online and brick & mortar — are having to institute new protocols and readapt their current business models.

One big change that SPUD.ca has been tackling is staffing. Van Stolk said that in the two-week period after the coronavirus pandemic hit, the company’s inbound employee applications skyrocketed from 200 to 10,000. Of the people they hired, SPUD.ca had to figure out best practices to keep the workers (not to mention shoppers) safe, including allowing employees to don personal protective equipment (PPE) if they so choose.

To that end, Lempert asked van Stolk about the question that’s keeping him (and presumably other grocery owners) up at night: How can grocery stores absorb additional costs from PPE for grocery workers, bonus payments, and paid sick leave, and still stay profitable?

For SPUD.ca, the answer was simple: start charging handling fees. In the interview, van Stolk said that SPUD.ca had originally stated that it would never charge delivery fees for their online orders. However, as with so many things during the pandemic, van Stolk said that has now changed. SPUD.ca will now charge customers a handling fee for grocery deliveries which is around $6. The company breaks down the fee to show where all the money will go: packaging, labor, sanitization, etc.  

SPUD.ca has had to make other compromises to keep their shoppers safe during the pandemic. Previously, one of the retailer’s main selling points was its emphasis on sustainability: it delivered food in returnable totes which it would later pick up, used reusable cups, etc. For now, the company has had to halt those initiatives to reduce the risk of contamination. “There’s a stop right now on that process,” van Stolk said. “People are focused on safety.”

SPUD.ca is a smaller retailer that only serves the Vancouver and surrounding regions of Canada, so it’s obviously not going through the exact same challenges as, say, giants like Walmart or Amazon which have to coordinate shipments around the globe. However, some problems are universal to the grocery industry right now, including safety, staffing, stocking, and the threat of impending price hikes for certain foods. I’m sure many retailers, large and small, will have sleepless nights as they try to figure out how to navigate this new normal for grocery.

You can watch the full video of the fireside chat below, and check out the other videos from the virtual conference here.

The Spoon COVID-19 Summit: How the Grocery World is Evolving During the COVID-19 Pandemic

April 13, 2020

Want to Sign Up for Amazon or Whole Foods Grocery Delivery or Pickup? You’ll Have to Wait(list)

Grocery delivery has been a lifeline for those unable to visit supermarkets in person and those just trying to flatten the viral curve. But there’s been a rush to grocery e-commerce, and if you’re just now trying it out, there’s a good chance that you’re gonna have to get in a virtual line.

Amazon announced today that it is instituting a waitlist for new online Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods customers. From a blog post outlining a number of changes the company was making in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic:

We are temporarily asking new Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market delivery and pickup customers to sign up for an invitation to use online grocery delivery and pickup. We’re increasing capacity each week and will invite new customers to shop every week.

Also in that announcement was the news that Amazon’s Woodland Hills, CA location, which was to be the first of its full-on supermarket locations, was opening as an online only order fulfillment center. Thankfully, that location appears to have robots to help with order processing.

Amazon isn’t the only company struggling to meet the crush of new demand in online grocery. Eater reported last week that FreshDirect and Instacart customers in NYC were staying up all night to try and get delivery slots. Grocery Dive wrote today that some ShopRite customers are being placed in virtual waiting rooms before they can shop (Ocado and Morrison’s shoppers in the UK face similar situations). And anecdotally speaking, my local Safeway’s delivery is full through the rest of this week, with no option to schedule beyond that.

All this is to say that grocery retailers, even the big ones, are having a hard time with all this craziness. Though they are all hiring like crazy, the infrastructure just wasn’t in place to handle years’ worth of growth in a matter of weeks. Hopefully, grocery retailers will be able to get their processes all ironed out so people will be able to get their food, while keeping all those store and delivery workers safe.

In the meantime, if you’re an existing Amazon/Whole Foods online customer, you can try this free downloadable tool that alerts you when delivery slots from the company opens up.

April 12, 2020

In a Time of Broken Norms, Restaurants Experiment to Stay Intact

So earlier this week I was chatting with a food industry colleague who pointed out the sheer amount of opportunity food businesses have right now to experiment with existing norms. At the moment, breaking those norms feels less risky because in many cases we can’t do things the old way.

No one knows this better right now than restaurants. Dining rooms are closed and once they reopen they won’t look the same. Shifting to a delivery-takeout model is a necessity, but it may not make up for all the lost sales. And lately, restaurants are going far outside their normal territory for ways to survive the double whammy of a global pandemic and an industry on the brink of meltdown.  

Selling groceries is one way.

Case in point: Subway this week announced Subway Grocery, a site where you can buy pantry staples straight out of the Subway supply chain. Think foot-long bread loaves, frozen soup, bagged lettuce, and bulk amounts of bacon. The move is a way to get consumers goods that might not actually be in the grocery stores right now (thanks, panic shopping). More importantly, it lets the chain supplement its to-go format while dining rooms stay closed due to coronavirus.

Panera quickly followed that news with a similar concept, Panera Grocery. Customers can order grocery items like breads, produce, and dairy items straight from Panera’s supply chain and via the Panera app or through Grubhub. Like any Panera meal, the goods get delivered to customers’ houses.

And in NYC, just salad launched Just Grocery, which says it will deliver household staples — from produce to paper towels — in 90 minutes or less to Manhattan residents. The company also launched a meal kit service of items from its own menu, which customers can also order from the Just Grocery site.

If I were a betting woman, I’d say more of these initiatives are to come. Right now, big chains like the ones above as well as smaller restaurant businesses (see below) have no choice but to adapt their businesses to new formats so they can add incremental revenue to severely declining sales Plus, I imagine prepping grocery and meal kit orders is another way to keep employees occupied in the process, not to mention save on food waste costs.

But what about when dining rooms open again? Will restaurants need an additional grocery business?

I’ll go on a limb here and say yes, and that at least some of these initiatives will be in place for a while. The reason is that once dining rooms re-open, they’re not going to resemble their former selves. I’m just going off my own speculation here, but I foresee the days of cramped tables close together and family-style seating as a thing of the past. Restaurants dining rooms will have way less capacity, and more than a few people will be wary of going out to eat.

That makes the additional revenue from grocery businesses an attractive long-term play for many of these chains.

Small Restaurants Turn to Big Grocery

Other restaurants are turning to grocery stores themselves, not to sell pantry staples but to get their own meals in the hands of customers at a time when eating out isn’t an option. Texas chain H-E-B launched a pilot program to carry ready-made meals from restaurants in 29 of its stores. For the program, the chain has partnered with local restaurants, some of which have been able to bring back furloughed employees thanks to the extra work (and presumably money). 

And in some cases, grocery stores are actually doing the hiring themselves. When Greensboro, NC-based chain The Fresh Market realized it didn’t have enough staff to keep up with the demand for groceries as well as the chain’s deli counter, it reached out to Darden Restaurants to hire out-of-work employees from the company’s restaurants (Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse).

The sharing of employees seems more of a stop-gap measure than long-term employment solution for many individuals, particularly those building a career in the restaurant industry. Selling restaurant food in stores, however, might stick around. Like I said above, there’s a pretty good chance restaurants won’t be operating at their old capacity once dining rooms reopen, which means other sources of revenue — even incremental revenue — will be a necessary staple for some time to come.

DoorDash Slashes Restaurant Commission Fees By 50%

Of late, I’ve approached most news from third-party delivery aggregators with more than a little skepticism along with the question: Is this really helping restaurants?

DoorDash announced it is reducing commission fees for “local” restaurants by 50 percent, from April 13 through the end of May. “This is not a deferral of fees, nor will merchants be asked to pay anything back,” the company said.

Third-party delivery companies are getting an increasing amount of flack for those commission fees, which can go as high as 30 percent per transaction. Cutting back those fees would obviously help restaurants during this time.

What I’d like to know is, when will the other shoe drop? More and more, the major third-party delivery companies are seen as predatory entities that are astoundingly out of touch with the daily realities of running a restaurant. Is this news from DoorDash an about-face for the company or is the other shoe dangling in the air right now? Maybe it’s hidden fees or getting locked into a contract. Maybe it’s none of those things, though that feels too optimistic an idea in a discussion about third-party delivery.

I’ll be having a third latté and digging into the fine print, so more on this to come.

Keep on truckin’,

Jenn

This is the post version of our weekly restaurant tech newsletter. To get the newsletter delivered to your inbox, just sign up here.

April 9, 2020

Get Alerts on When Delivery Slots at Amazon and Whole Foods Open Up with This Free JavaScript Tool

Like a game of whack-a-mole, people who are flocking to e-commerce for their grocery shopping in this time of pandemic are encountering a new headache: longer-than-normal wait times to get their food actually delivered.

Once you’ve placed your order, it can be one if not two weeks before a delivery window opens up. This a problem for people who really shouldn’t go to the grocery store (think: elderly parents, or the immunocompromised) or those who can’t get there because of essential work or family. The fact that grocers aren’t exactly great at alerting you that an item has gone out of stock between the time you order and the time you get your delivery only complicates the problem.

There may be a small fix for this. CNBC reports on a new tool you can run on your computer to make finding a delivery window a little bit easier.  Adrian Hertel built a downloadable program that alerts you when delivery slots in Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods open up. Hertel told CNBC he built the tool out of concern for his parents, who have immune deficiencies.

Now, before you get too excited, the tool, plainly dubbed Amazon Fresh/Whole Foods Delivery Slot Finder, is not some slick app that you install on your phone. It’s a JavaScript tool that you have to download from GitHub, and it only works via Script Editor on a Mac running Safari.

Once you download and run the Slot Finder, you have to visit Amazon/Whole Foods in the Safari browser. Then you have to go through the whole checkout process and stop once you get to the delivery options. Once there, you run the Slot Finder script.

Here’s how the script works, according to Slot Finder’s GitHub page:

  • It opens the checkout page in a new window, minimizes it, and then refreshes every ~60 seconds in the background.
  • Once it finds an open slot it alerts you by putting a notification on your screen and playing a sound, and opening the checkout page. You can choose to receive text messages when a slot is found
  • You can choose to have the tool ignore out of stock notifications and continue searching uninterrupted
  • Once you’re notified, quickly select a slot and finish checking out because available slots are snagged almost instantly.

It’s not the most elegant solution, and though I downloaded and set it up, I can’t test it out since Amazon Fresh/Whole Foods doesn’t deliver to my area. If you try it out, drop us a line and tell us how it went!

While the Slot Finder may be rough, it does highlight how people are getting creative in solving everyday problems caused by this pandemic. Hopefully, as the likes Amazon and Walmart hire hundreds of thousands of new workers to keep up with demand, delayed delivery windows will be a thing of the past.

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April 5, 2020

Cashierless Checkout? No Salad Bars? What Will Grocery Stores Look Like After COVID-19

Even though we are nowhere near the end of this pandemic (though I hold our hope efforts to “flatten the curve” prove successful) I’ve started thinking about what everyday things will look like in a post-COVID-19 world. In particular, and because it’s my beat, I’ve been thinking about grocery stores.

Here in Washington state, the shelter-in-place order has been extended for another month to May 4th at the very earliest. This means that the Albrecht house at least, will continue to its grocery shopping online. We’re settling into new routines with different mail order subscriptions, delivery and curbside pickup offerings. Those habits are will likely become even more ingrained and our new normal. In other words, my physically going to the grocery store could very well move from minimal to almost not at all, even with a lockdown lifted.

But actually visiting a grocery store on the other side of this outbreak will undoubtedly be a different experience with the changes being implemented.

For instance, plexiglass shields are being installed at checkouts to better protect cashiers against human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus. It’s hard to imagine those coming down any time soon, or at all. Beyond COVID-19, there will still be cold and flu seasons, and this pandemic has (hopefully) put a healthy fear of viruses into the general population. I imagine those barriers are here to stay, and really, given all that grocery store workers are doing for us right now, that’s not a bad thing.

But perhaps this pandemic will accelerate the adoption of cashierless checkout, eliminating that point of human contact altogether. Just scan your phone as you walk in, grab what you want and leave, getting charged automatically. Previously, the big issues around cashierless checkout was the impact it would have on human jobs and access for the underbanked. The problems around equity will still need to be figured out, but perhaps if delivery and pickup become the new normal, those cashier jobs can migrate to other parts of the store.

Which brings up the question of what other parts of the store will there be? Most markets near me have closed down the salad and hot bars. People breathing (or coughing) near open food + serving utensils used over and over suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Will grocers become more like cafeterias, with an official store person ladling out your soup? Will there be more vending machine-like services dispensing food? Those don’t seem like dumb ideas.

And if we’re cutting down on reusable items, will the sanitizing of carts be automated? Will a cannister of wipes at the entrance enough, or will we see car-wash style drive thrus for carts and baskets?

Finally, how will we move about stores, especially when we don’t want to be too close to one another? If there are no salad bars, will regular aisles get wider? Kroger is testing out one-way aisles at one of its stores to help reinforce social distancing. While I haven’t tried it out, this is an idea I can get behind, especially when shopping during a pandemic. During my last trip to the grocery store in person, people were wandering the aisles haphazardly and not really paying attention. Granted, we’re all in a daze right now, but perhaps a few arrow decals on floors could add some order to the store.

I don’t know what the post-pandemic grocery store will look like, but changes are coming. What do you think will happen? Leave a comment below and share your opinion!

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