Do you live in a weird area? Like very remote or extremely low density or something? Or are you just upper class? I would assume getting all your groceries delivered from amazon would be significantly more expensive than buying them from a supermarket.
It may be the opposite -- if you live in a city with amazon fresh, the prices are about the same as the grocery store. Various amazon sales/credits (and cashback from an amazon credit card) usually offset the delivery price. If you live somewhere where they fulfill whole foods, then those prices are the same as well.
FWIW I live in a city and don't have a ton of storage space, so getting bulk prices from a warehouse store is impractical. TP and Paper towels come on subscribe and save and are cheaper than the corner store, and roughly the same as the grocery store.
I still shop in person most of the time because I like to pick my produce and the substitutions tend to be a mess, but delivery is great when things are busy or we want a bigger order.
In the LA area, I've noticed that the vast majority of grocery store customers are elderly. It's common for me to be the only person under 50, besides sometimes mothers with kids in tow or some dude buying beer. Whether I'm on the westside or some random suburb, it's like this. Once enough of the elderly die off, so will many of these grocery stores, I think. One of the few exceptions is Trader Joe's for some reason. Even I have been buying more groceries online just to avoid the abysmal experience of grocery stores.
Very strange. So people buy their TP online and get it shipped to them with more paper around them than it takes to make the rolls themselves? Opening, breaking down and disposing the box seems much more work and wasteful.
I understand groceries delivered by Instacart etc., but I don't understand ordering bulk non-perishable consumables online when a one time trip to a wholesale store like Sams would be much cheaper and "greener".
> Very strange. So people buy their TP online and get it shipped to them with more paper around them than it takes to make the rolls themselves? Opening, breaking down and disposing the box seems much more work and wasteful.
TP ships to grocery stores in cardboard boxes too; if you buy the large sizes, they just put the shipping label on that box.
- Stores could recycle/reuse the boxes a lot easier and maybe they do.
- You don't have to handle the breaking down and disposing yourself.
- How many people doing this are buying 96ct boxes?
- It takes a ridiculous amount of space for last mile delivery especially if they are buying the 96ct box which would be the closest to efficiency of a wholesale store, but still not as good.
I'm not a eco-nazi so I don't really care to squabble over emissions, but it's a bit silly, do people in LA not do wholesale runs a couple times a year for bulk items? It just seems wasteful for the delivery system and yourself, financially and otherwise.
You can buy more in bulk and shipping doesn't just involve the delivery driver, whose truck you just took 1/4th the space of with TP, requiring more resupply trips.
Shipping to a wholesale store is obviously more efficient than to the last mile, I don't see how that's up for debate. Generally you run other errands as well.
In my experience, which I acknowledge is limited to my circle, the only major errand for most households is bulk grocery shopping for the family or shared house. Note that "groceries" here means everything you buy in a big store or cluster of walkably-close stores, so it covers more than just food.
Other journeys in a vehible: A commute maybe, but those are separate journeys from bulk groceries because every household member is going to a different place. Also it's less likely to be in a car. Carrying large shopping bags on a train or bus to another city is not much fun.
Occasionally other trips to social events, see a doctor or whatever, but that's not going to happen in the same trip as bulk groceries.
There is nothing else regular that requires a journey in a vehicle.
Having a delivery driver do a planned circuit to multiple households to deliver bulk groceries is much less driving and pollution than having every household drive to the store and back.
Sure, that last mile is less efficient than shipping to the wholestore store, but that seems irrelevant to the point at hand. It's still much more efficient to do the last mile in a single planned circuit than multiple last miles where everyone goes in and out separately.
You are making guesswork drive a lot of your opinions here. Why can you buy more in bulk in person than when a truck drives to your building? The concept of "last mile" makes no sense for Amazon, since they will drive past your address in the suburbs anyway, and in a city they're already driving to your building (several times per day if it's big).
I agree Instacart is probably garbage for the environment, because in the suburbs it's often a passenger car delivering for just one household, but that's just equal to the baseline.
There's limited space on that truck, you know that right?
They have to resupply. Bulk TP takes up room, a little amount of TP is inefficient.
In no way is getting TP delivered to you ever more efficient than buying from a wholesale store.
You're trying to justify it, for whatever reason. I'm not advocating to banish it, it just seems silly.
> and in a city they're already driving to your building (several times per day if it's big).
Yes they're driving around all day because everyone is buying stuff like TP lol.
- edit to reply below because post limit -
TP is a lightweight, large volume package. The more TP you order more frequently, the less space the truck has, the more amount of resupply trips needed.
The alternative (normal way) I'm proposing is not those cars filling the same void as the truck. It's that you should buy in bulk those items, directly, less frequency and leave more room for mass last mile delivery of items that are small / perishable / unavailable in bulk.
> There's limited space on that truck, you know that right?
What sort of delivery mode is this statement supposed to defend?
I deleted a lot of text to substitute this simple question: if you wanted to bring toilet paper to all 250 apartments in our building, would you use a passenger car or a truck?
I live in lower Manhattan. Stores here aren't particularly cheap, but I haven't done a thorough comparison. Even if the stores were cheaper, the time savings would cover a pretty big difference. Having kids certainly increases the value of time.
These responses are really unsettling to me. For how much people complain about Amazon's power and unfair treatment of workers, how it ruins small business, moves money out of rural areas, how shipping price increases are driving inflation, how bad shipping/Amazon is for the environment... it's jolting to see people say they order not only a lightweight but high volume material like toilet paper, but also the majority of their groceries to their homes. Everyone I know shops at WinCo, Fred Meyer, Trader Joes, and the Co-Op. The only thing I've ever considered hitting the 'subscribe and save' button on is a medication for my dog.
Why exactly do you think in person shopping is better for the environment? Studies usually come out in favor of delivery.
On top of that we live in an apartment building, and a single truck makes deliveries for dozens of, if not a hundred, households (there are 250 units, and multiple trucks arrive each day). Imagine if all of us drove cars to accomplish this instead.
If all you did with a car was get groceries, it would probably be more economical to just order delivery. Most people use their car for a lot more than that, though.
Going in person to a warehouse style store like a grocery store or department store is becoming a quaint experience from the past (for us at least).