Pondo
Yet, as you say, online supermarket sales are growing
Exactly my point along with Tesco (despite being crippled still to some extent in their IT processes) growing faster online than the others.
Whoever gets this right first is going to sweep the floor when people realise they can get fresh produce not just the left overs people didn't buy in store. I'm amazed how people think it's even acceptable to get missing items etc. and excuse gross incompetence at an executive level as "but the pickers/drivers. maybe they ran out or someone bought the item already paid for off the shelf.." but once people realise it doesn't need to be a shit 3rd rate service they aren't going to keep brand loyalty for everyday items.
If you believe McKinsey by 2030 it will be over 50% (perhaps that's optimistic but who knows 35% by 2030??) and it will be like Wiggle/CRC vs Tredz (Halfords) or Evans?
I had a rant a the check out today because they’ve changed from weighing at the checkout to weighing yourself at the veg stand.
Total side-track but I am sure I remember this being the norm in France in the late 80s or early 90s?
It depends on the supermarket, even within the same brand. The ones I use most; Proxi, Aldi, Lidl, Petit Casino are weigh at check out. Super U are the annoying ones with no idication just a scale with a sign up in the air. Leclerc have numbers on the goods in one supermarket to type in (it makes it more obvious) and weighing at the caisse at the other I go to... .
on the basis it's not owned until it's paid for, and booked out of stock, is it fair game for online pickers to plunder shopper's trolleys for items if needed, to satisfy the online delivery customers who have paid already?
Exactly my point along with Tesco (despite being crippled still to some extent in their IT processes) growing faster online than the others.
Great - so this "online shopping is a disaster" nonsense is just... Nonsense.
have you ever actually had an online shopping order? this is not my experience, at all! Why would pickers deliberately select poor items - they would just be rejected which would then reflect badly on them - just doesn't make any sense?Whoever gets this right first is going to sweep the floor when people realise they can get fresh produce not just the left overs people didn’t buy in store. I’m amazed how people think it’s even acceptable to get missing items etc. and excuse gross incompetence
Here's another question. Self scan - not the till points, the hand held things.
According to my checkout operator daughter the till randomly requests a check every now and then. Most of the time she'll have to scan a few items only and if they're all on the self scan then it's all good. If not, then a full rescan is ordered. Sometimes it'll just request a full rescan for S&G anyway.
She says that a surprising number of even the random 10 or so items checks turns up a missing item. Which of course is always a surprise to the shopper, who then gets pissy about the time involved....'I do self scan to save time, not waste it!'
The incidence of missing items on rescans acc to her is increasing, and is to her non-scientifically gathered data, more frequent than the frequency of scan requests per shop.
It's not stats and IANAS but seems like the odds are way stacked in favour of the shoplifter and they know it, given the incidence of getting found out. Most of the time you won't get rescanned anyway, but if you are most of the time it'll only be a random scan which might miss what you nicked. And if it doesn't and you get a full rescan, you only pay for what you are taking away anyway, there's no penalty.
I wonder how much indignant Karen's are thieving, which in the end we all pay for?
Great – so this “online shopping is a disaster” nonsense is just… Nonsense.
If its a disaster for you will depend if your bonus, dividend, salary or pension have invested in the losers.
Is it a "disaster" that Tandy, Radio Shack or Blockbuster no longer exist? I guess only to those lost their jobs and pensions due to the executive incompetence?
I'm sure there was another reason why Blockbuster had to close 🤔 Some emerging technology? Can't remember.Is it a “disaster” that Tandy, Radio Shack or Blockbuster no longer exist? I guess only to those lost their jobs and pensions due to the executive incompetence?
If its a disaster for you will depend if your bonus, dividend, salary or pension have invested in the losers.
Hang on a minute - I thought you labelled it a disaster because sometimes not everything turns up (in a not disimilar way to sometimes not everything I want is in the shop), what's this other crap got to do with it?
have you ever actually had an online shopping order? this is not my experience, at all!
Not since lockdown when I got deregistered from Sainsbury's due to GDPR or something, never bothered reregistering as they wanted a new eMail as the main one was already in use though they had no records of me ... ???? or shopping in a Sainsbury's superstore since. I do use the local but that's just because its a convenient ride away..
My mum does at least weekly.. I've never seen her get what she ordered without out of date or going out of date items.. hence she often ends up doing a second one.
Why would pickers deliberately select poor items – they would just be rejected which would then reflect badly on them – just doesn’t make any sense?
As a minimum because the stackers put/move the out of date and stuff about to go out of date at the front...
Why would they select it? Because then the supermarket can get rid of it without having to discount. If its sent back they can just send it to someone else or put it back on the shelves for someone with poor eyesight until someone doesn't notice.
As per thread title you presumably can't complain without being banned so what's the comeback?
I mean, how can a barcoded out of date item even be still on the shelves without gross incompetence?
We're in fantasy-land now - I'm out of here.
Hang on a minute – I thought you labelled it a disaster because sometimes not everything turns up (in a not disimilar way to sometimes not everything I want is in the shop), what’s this other crap got to do with it?
Did I say disaster? Well it is if t means my mother can't eat because of the gross incompetence of supermarket executives.
I'm pretty sure those losing their jobs will see it as a disaster ...
I’m sure there was another reason why Blockbuster had to close 🤔 Some emerging technology? Can’t remember.
Would that be the emerging technology they decided not to buy when offered Netflix or otherwise invest in? (and that was pre-streaming) They decided people didn't want posted films and would prefer to drive somewhere, pay parking and find what they wanted was already out.
Looking back it seems so obvious .. someone came up with a far superior service that they refused to acknowledge but they refused the rather small at the time offer to buy in.
The same will happen to supermarkets that refuse to change their delivery models to use what is already established technology.
do you know what, I'm prepared to bet this bottle of lemon washing up liquid (substituted for lemon juice - the bastards, ruined my pancake day completely) that we don't see supermarkets failing over the failure to adopt this fantasy model.
For the vast majority of people it works just fine. Your Mum is an outlier, just as mine is. She realises it and has to keep some frozen stuff as back up to compensate for the odd time when it creates an issue.
I’m amazed how people think it’s even acceptable to get missing items etc.
Shit happens™
This is the JIT model, isn't it. As a retailer you either sell what you know you have in stock, or you do it speculatively trusting that your suppliers will fulfil orders. What point is there in looking on the shelves for a box of strawberries which have been ordered for delivery a week Thursday? And that's all a bit ducked now, thanks to brexit your strawberries are still in Kent.
Here’s another question. Self scan – not the till points, the hand held things.
I use these things almost exclusively when in-store. Whilst I don't doubt that some people take the piss, it's really easy to screw up. Sometimes things don't scan, sometimes you're distracted. They're better now at locking out until you acknowledge an error message, at least.
I'm fairly sure as well that there will be an algorithm. If you fail a random check, the frequency of 'random' checks will increase.
In the interest of balance, I should mention I got an unsolicited multipack of raisin snack boxes in this weeks online shop today 😀
theotherjonv
do you know what, I’m prepared to bet this bottle of lemon washing up liquid (substituted for lemon juice – the bastards, ruined my pancake day completely) that we don’t see supermarkets failing over the failure to adopt this fantasy model.
For the vast majority of people it works just fine. Your Mum is an outlier, just as mine is. She realises it and has to keep some frozen stuff as back up to compensate for the odd time when it creates an issue.
Cougar
Shit happens™
This is the JIT model, isn’t it. As a retailer you either sell what you know you have in stock, or you do it speculatively trusting that your suppliers will fulfil orders. What point is there in looking on the shelves for a box of strawberries which have been ordered for delivery a week Thursday? And that’s all a bit ducked now, thanks to brexit your strawberries are still in Kent.
The thing is blockbusters worked "perfectly fine" etc. or "well enough" etc.
People put up with not having what they wanted in because it was a new alternative.
Those of us remember it probably remember the idea of going and seeing of they had anything you wanted to actually watch.. and of course there were highstreets back then as well.
It's not "shit happens" though, it's "shit is allowed to happen because we can't be arsed".. just like any LBS might have a shit happens and fit the forks backwards ... Shit happens is "flash floods" .. a motorway collision etc. ships getting stuck in the Suez canal ???
A bit of an illustration from extreme to less .. someone driving an articulated lorry ploughs through a line of cars whilst texting... (I think we can agree it's not "shit happens" or "accidental") .. at the other end I'm wandering round the supermarket and someone rams me with a trolley whist texting ... It's not an accident or shit happens though is it?
The made a conscious decision to continue pushing the trolley about whilst texting...
This is where I see the supermarkets .. they made a conscious decision to maintain their delivery, distribution and logistics for online shopping rather than rethink how they can benefit they did it because they don't want to lose market share to some other supermarket. So long as they deliver the same sort of shittyness its "just good enough".
This is the JIT model, isn’t it.
Nope ..and that is really my point (it could be but they didn't embrace it or digital transformation)
(First google but it's pretty authoritative so.. https://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/dstools/jit-just-in-time-manufacturing/ )
`Just-in-time' is a management philosophy and not a technique.
It originally referred to the production of goods to meet customer demand exactly, in time, quality and quantity, whether the `customer' is the final purchaser of the product or another process further along the production line.
If I was to give it a name then it's "just good enough", its certainly not "exactly, in time, quality and quantity". It's "just good enough to stop people switching"
It has now come to mean producing with minimum waste. "Waste" is taken in its most general sense and includes time and resources as well as materials. Elements of JIT include:
Putting stuff onto shelves to be removed to expire etc. etc. is all just poorly reusing their logistics model.
They have a "pre-order" - practically guaranteed not speculation as they do with "click and collect" type stuff. The customer actually already paid... so its as close to guaranteed as possible. (Look back at the definitions of JIT)
as a minor point "Whilst I don’t doubt that some people take the piss, it’s really easy to screw up." .. and they avoid this as well.
Supermarkets exist in a protective bubble... they essentially have the size to set the market price so they can put small stores out of business or make up such a small part of the market it isn't worth fighting for.
It's not like someone can just start "Cougar's" and have the footprint and reach. Take Booths they are still more expensive than Sainsbury's/Tesco for the same items most of the time (5p for a can of beans)
That said they could also do deliveries due to their restricted area. I think basically everything is centralised around J31a ...
The other part of my point is we shouldn't feel we can't complain .. its not the drivers fault it's the executives that embraced the "Just good enough model and I still think when a major supermarket does it right they will wipe up.
Take a look at market share and then say Tesco got 80% of the online market whilst in store shrinks to 50% or less...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/280208/grocery-market-share-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/
mattyfez
In the interest of balance, I should mention I got an unsolicited multipack of raisin snack boxes in this weeks online shop today
I got haribo's but that's not why I ordered from Wiggle/CRC ... it's because I knew delivery would be as ordered.
If I was to give it a name then it’s “just good enough”, its certainly not “exactly, in time, quality and quantity”. It’s “just good enough to stop people switching”
But this is how most sectors are. You can have 'good enough' or you can pay extra and have 'very good' or even 'perfect'. And the vast majority of people choose 'good enough', and that's why Costa Coffee and McDonalds and Primark are so enormously successful and dominate the high streets.
If I was to give it a name then it’s “just good enough”, its certainly not “exactly, in time, quality and quantity”. It’s “just good enough to stop people switching”
But no-one is going to change that because every other model costs far more in actual ££, time, resources and/or space to do.
Boeing don't have 200 massive Rolls-Royce engines sat out the back waiting for them to build some planes cos they don't have space for them, the engines would rust or seize, they might not use them all etc...
Once they have an order book for the next tranche, they'll order a run of engines from RR who will use the same JIT delivery method to order in all the parts from their own suppliers and so on. That way no-one has spent ££ on vast quantities of engine bits that might never be needed and will sit there filling valuable warehouse space.
Same across the industries - car and bicycle manufacturers, food...
It's why, if you order a niche artisan product that is made by hand it costs a fortune cos the supplier of said product has to order in all the raw materials at whatever they might cost at that moment (rather than hedging and buying a long way in advance), fire up all the facilities to build it and then ship one product. It's incredibly inefficient, even if you do get a "perfect" product out the other end.
Way to ruin a stories of customers being dicks thread stw...
I used to run supply chain forecasting for a chemical co. I know how it works, from customer forecasting through stock holding and cost /value of inventory and WoH, to plant scheduling and manufacturing and RM ordering and stock holding.
The analyses we ran on the amount to hold in at each step enabled us to set levels to hold enough to make sure we could fill all forecasted orders and then a safety net. Or we could set it where we could fill 100%, 95, 90, you set it ..... and accept that there would be customers who we'd let down, by short or delayed deliveries. As long as you didn't always short the same customer every time and shared it round by an allocation process, each customer might get a delayed delivery once every couple of years, which they'd complain about at the time but overall say our service was good.
The COST of holding enough to cover the peak demands and some was substantially more than the cost of holding say 95%. The benefit was virtually non-existent. We did it product by product from time to time as well - some we didn't want to be short of (eg: beer filter aid in summer - if we couldn't fill the order they'd have to go elsewhere, you can't just leave it in the brew vessel until next week for the delayed order)
So - parallels to the supermarket question. As well as cash tied up in stock, they also have the issue of short shelflife and no chance to actually run FIFO inventory beyond putting the nearest use by dates at the front of the shelf. I'm sure they've modelled increasing stock against benefit and realise that being short and substituting or chucking in a £5 voucher if the customer really rants is way more efficient. They will also have probably modelled store cupboard type inventory against fresh - and expect their customers to not be waiting before the last knockings of the tommy k before reordering, so if it doesn't arrive this week, no real harm. Worst case they'll get a bottle from the corner shop, if they don't accept the own brand i.o Heinz first.
I realise our Mums are outliers to this but the model is there for the average shopper, not the 0.5 or 1%
As for the supermarket that sorts this out will put the others out of business. Sorry, just won't happen. Not least, if one does it and the additional cost doesn't cripple them (remember, most supermarkets are running on 1-3% net margins) then everyone else will do the same, they won't 'miss the boat' like your very true Blockbuster example which was revolution, not evolution.
And everyone will rebalance at about where they were, fighting for a fractional market share gain or loss based on comparing till receipts, and BOGOF's and all the other things they do to win share. Except they'll all now be burning more cash and margin on holding 'excess' stock that 99% of their customers don't really care about. And they'll all increase their prices to compensate.
In fact I'd counterbet that the cost of a supermarket going to the service everyone OTIF all the time model would mean having to increase prices, that would then LOSE market share against the others that didn't. They might get 100% share of the 1% that need that service level though.
doris5000
But this is how most sectors are. You can have ‘good enough’ or you can pay extra and have ‘very good’ or even ‘perfect’. And the vast majority of people choose ‘good enough’, and that’s why Costa Coffee and McDonalds and Primark are so enormously successful and dominate the high streets.
Fair point though how much this is "people" vs "Brits" ??
Domino's didn't release their reasons for pulling out of Italy (last week?) for example.. but cultural differences aside I find Brits are just happy to "eat shit" when it's convenient (in both the wider and more literal sense.
Almost like we're stuck between America and Europe but got the worst off the venn diagram?
Chucking cultural differences back in and taking the "nation of shopkeepers" I don't find it amazing that Italians would just reject Domino's...
When I lived in France anyone I asked about banks more or less said the same thing ... paraphrased "they are all equally crap so just choose whatever is nearest"
crazy-legs
But no-one is going to change that because every other model costs far more in actual ££, time, resources and/or space to do.
I'm struggling to see this because the current process is so inefficient.
Boeing don’t have 200 massive Rolls-Royce engines sat out the back waiting for them to build some planes cos they don’t have space for them, the engines would rust or seize, they might not use them all etc…
Once they have an order book for the next tranche, they’ll order a run of engines from RR who will use the same JIT delivery method to order in all the parts from their own suppliers and so on. That way no-one has spent ££ on vast quantities of engine bits that might never be needed and will sit there filling valuable warehouse space.
Except not supermarkets ... which is the point.
"Traditional" supermarkets (if that isn't an oxymoron) are estimating or otherwise modelling demand and ordering in advance because they put stuff on shelves for people to put in trolleys to be scanned. Anything pre-ordered and paid for is as close to an actual sale as makes little difference.
If you believe multiple predictions (such as the one I linked) then something like 50% of food will be delivered by 2030.
Delivering to supermarkets, putting it on the shelves to be picked if it's still there doesn't sound anything close to efficient nor does it look like it will scale.
Way to ruin a stories of customers being dicks thread stw…
So instead of calling out people who after they paid for something didn't get it I'm calling out the executives of supermarkets who think we should STFU and just put up with their poor service?
I’m calling out the executives of supermarkets who think we should STFU and just put up with their poor service?
I think a reading of this thread suggests that on the whole we are satisfied with the service in general, we don't want to pay any more for it, and consequently we're happy to 'STFU'
Remember too, the CEO's of the supermarkets have a different set of customers - namely investors. That's who they have to keep happy. Rightly or wrongly.
Remember too, the CEO’s of the supermarkets have a different set of customers – namely investors. That’s who they have to keep happy. Rightly or wrongly.
Well rightly or wrongly my point is that by not considering a cheaper delivery model they are going to lose market share.
IF the 50% by 2030 of food being delivered is in anyway accurate then taking it from the delivery to store on shelves (in case someone buys it) to send someone else to take it back off the shelf (if it's still there) doesn't seem very efficient in any way.
With 50% that means half their orders are pre-orders... they don't have to hold excess stock they can order when it's ordered. (or in practice adjust)
The reality of 50% is more profound though... I mean the whole point of supermarkets to the consumer is "everything in one place" and a secondary one being "parking" (isn't it).
Parking disappears and the all in one place and a single reliable delivery would seem to be the replacement of driving to some place that has everything you need?
I think a reading of this thread suggests that on the whole we are satisfied with the service in general, we don’t want to pay any more for it, and consequently we’re happy to ‘STFU’
You seem convinced its going to cost more ... I'm far from convinced and think it should cost less.
Less kept in stock, less waste, less touch points, less returned, lower human error and more automation.
theotherjonv - your long post up the page^^^ cuts through much of the crap that preceded it.
Supermarkets are true experts in demand modelling and determining and implementing the optimal solution which is always a combination of service and cost.
They're not in the business of holding stock just in case nor having deliveries arrive just too late.
If it was cheaper and won market share, the experts at the supermarkets would have done it already.
