this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Paying a contractor to have an employee drive to a grocery store, pickup $435 worth of groceries, drive them to you, unload them, then drive home would reasonably run $100. Many professional companies will charge that or more for 1-2 hours of employee time.
I think her issue isn't that she's paying more via fees and tips. It's that the store is charging her more for every individual item. One would expect to pay the shopper and delivery person for their effort. But realizing that the store is capturing most of that AND charging you more for every item on top of it seems to be the problem. The shopper, delivery person and the buyer are all getting shafted.
We've got a grocery store here in Canada launching a 'groceries Prime' subscription of $100 a year. As part of the marketing push they say you'll "pay in store prices, no hidden fees" on pick up orders, beat in mind they use their own staff for this, no outside shoppers or third parties involved. The implication I take from the ad being when I use their online grocery order app they are already charging me different prices, and hidden fees.
Here is the ad from my inbox.
In the US, lots of stores are doing free curbside pickup on your orders, their employees pick it and bring it out to your car, in-store prices, no additional fees.
I do pickup at my local ShopRite. Costs $4.99 unless you spend over $100 in which case it’s free. Saves me a ton of time and shopping via their app helps me find deals I might not find otherwise in a packed store.
I mean it implies that you pay a premium for them to send someone around if you do it on a per case basis... or you can pay a flat fee. Theyre betting most people that subscribe at the flat fee will not have run up more than $100 in extra margin.
This seems reasonably justifiable, considering groceries is one of the shittiest margin businesses and labor isn't free.
This is a Canadian grocery chain called Loblaws, yes the very same Loblaws who had to pay out for price fixing on bread recently. The same who increased their profits to record levels this year and the same who replaced most of their checkouts with self checkout machines. You'll excuse me for not worrying about their margins while they hide fees on pick-up shoppers and try to market price transparency as a perk of membership.
Price transparency should be included for everyone.
Help your fellow canucks out and tell us who’s doing this! I’m happy to save myself some sanity and not attend the weekly superstore circus.
Just to clarify, the majority of those markups are actually imposed by Instacart and not "the store" for what it's worth.