Crazy about retail.
https://www.retailwatchers.com/
SPOT ON about Kroger!buckguy wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 10:25 am Delivery seems to be in decline. The people doing the shopping for it at Whole Foods used to be unavoidable most mornings duirng COVID. I rarely see them or deliveries to where I live now. This probably is not the best time to establish a new delivery brand--they may figure that the Harris-Teeter branding will help them, but it seems like something that can only help at the margins.
The enduring thing about Kroger is that they're not an innovator---they play defense and they sometimes are a little late in the game when they do. That can help them where the competition has moved slowly, but this is an area where it has come and gone already.
I think the delivery issues at Amazon and Whole Foods are self-inflicted. The Fresh stores operated better as dark stores - the delivery service was absolutely fantastic. Then Amazon value engineered the service quality to crap by requiring the workers to pack more units into the bags, stopped using expensive mylar insulated cold bags and replaced with a single frozen water bottle in paper, and so on. Whole Foods was also value engineered. Then minimum order values were increased. Between the lowered quality of packaging and the higher order amount requirements they basically killed the business.buckguy wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 10:25 am Delivery seems to be in decline. The people doing the shopping for it at Whole Foods used to be unavoidable most mornings duirng COVID. I rarely see them or deliveries to where I live now. This probably is not the best time to establish a new delivery brand--they may figure that the Harris-Teeter branding will help them, but it seems like something that can only help at the margins.
The enduring thing about Kroger is that they're not an innovator---they play defense and they sometimes are a little late in the game when they do. That can help them where the competition has moved slowly, but this is an area where it has come and gone already.
Not just WF. I'm not seeing Peapod, either, which had quite a few customers either. Safeway delivery never seemed to catch-on here.ClownLoach wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 1:04 pmI think the delivery issues at Amazon and Whole Foods are self-inflicted. The Fresh stores operated better as dark stores - the delivery service was absolutely fantastic. Then Amazon value engineered the service quality to crap by requiring the workers to pack more units into the bags, stopped using expensive mylar insulated cold bags and replaced with a single frozen water bottle in paper, and so on. Whole Foods was also value engineered. Then minimum order values were increased. Between the lowered quality of packaging and the higher order amount requirements they basically killed the business.buckguy wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 10:25 am Delivery seems to be in decline. The people doing the shopping for it at Whole Foods used to be unavoidable most mornings duirng COVID. I rarely see them or deliveries to where I live now. This probably is not the best time to establish a new delivery brand--they may figure that the Harris-Teeter branding will help them, but it seems like something that can only help at the margins.
The enduring thing about Kroger is that they're not an innovator---they play defense and they sometimes are a little late in the game when they do. That can help them where the competition has moved slowly, but this is an area where it has come and gone already.
I think the fundamental issue is that the customer wants good delivery services, but they want the same in store price. The good quality services can't do it profitably. The bad quality services fail once and then are rejected by the customer forever (Walmart...).
Kroger might be onto something if their automated Ocado warehouses fix the labor piece and enable them to offer same pricing for delivered goods as in store and still have high quality packaging and delivery service.