ORLANDO, Fla. – If you walked into the paper goods aisle at your local grocer since coronavirus cases first reached Florida and saw nothing on the shelves and then thought, “Now is the time to start ordering groceries online,” you are not alone and for many people, an app just isn’t the solution this time, as the supply isn’t meeting the demand.
“Due to high demand, some items have extended delivery dates,” is the new version of walking into an empty grocery aisle.
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In the U.S., grocery shopping had only been slowly migrating online, making up 3% of the food retail market, according to a report last year by Deutsche Bank.
As the coronavirus crisis hit and millions of Americans began to stay home, delivery orders surged. During the week of March 2 -- even before some cities and states imposed “stay-at-home” orders -- Instacart, Amazon and Walmart grocery delivery sales all jumped by at least two-thirds from the year before, according to Earnest Research. Instacart, a platform that partners with more than 25,000 stores in North America, says orders in more recent weeks have surged 150%.
The coronavirus pandemic is forcing tech companies to rapidly expand its gig workers, known as “shoppers,” and create new ways to deliver much needed toilet paper to the masses.
Grocery delivery app Shipt, which delivers for big-box stores like Target, has increased its support staff and delivery hours attempting to the meet the demand, but the company said recently it’s still hiring more shoppers and is working with a call center to handle the volume of calls. Instacart announced plans at the end of March to bring on an additional 300,000 full-service shoppers across North America over the next three months and Amazon is hiring an additional 100,000 to meet the demand.
Major grocers, including Publix, Aldi and Fresh Market, rely on Instacart’s app and user interface to allow customers to order online for delivery. Fresh Market recently started using Instacart during the pandemic.
Here’s how it works: A shopper visits their favorite grocer’s website and submits an order, which then goes to Instacart. That shopper would then normally wait an hour or two for their groceries to be delivered to their door by an Instacart shopper. But now, wait times are surging from hours to days because stores are out of products and the shoppers buying your groceries aren’t just shopping for one person but dozens of self-isolating families.
Grocers are still struggling to keep up with the demand. Buying online instead of in person is just increasing their demand.
Even Ocado, a pioneer in online groceries in the U.K. since 2002, has struggled to keep up with demand and they have robots, reports the Associated Press.
Ocado has automated warehouses where cube-shaped robots on wheels zip along vast grids, picking up food and other goods and delivering them to “picking stations." There, humans or robot arms put together customers’ orders to be delivered by a fleet of vans.
As Publix CEO Todd Jones recently put it: Waiting outside stores before they open is unnecessary and people should be buying only what they need, not preparing for the next pandemic.
“There is no need to buy extra. Products will continue to be delivered daily,” Jones said.
Instacart shared some tips with its customers recently to help them navigate online grocery ordering during this uncertain time.
The other problem with grocery delivery is that someone -- a real human-- is still making the trek to the store, encountering people at one of the only places where more than 10 people are still gathering -- against CDC guidelines -- to gather your goods and bring them to your door.
While the medical workers treating coronavirus patients are on the front lines, the person delivering bananas to your apartment is also facing exposure to the highly contagious virus.
Both Instacart and Shipt will provide two weeks of financial assistance to any of its shoppers who are diagnosed with coronavirus or placed under quarantine.
With all that in mind, the next time your shoppers brings your goods to your door, remember to thank them -- from a distance, of course.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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