Many years ago I started working as part of a team that implemented online grocery stores. This was for one of the early online services Prodigy (pre-internet), which was based out of White Plains, New York.
When we traveled to demonstrate the service, we did so with 2 huge anvil cases – one for the monitor one for the CPU. So large they had to be checked under the plane. These cases would literally come tumbling off the conveyer belt in the baggage claim area. When we did get to the grocer, we had to hunt down a phone line that could handle the 2400 baud modem. Sometimes it was in a meeting room, once it was on the loading dock at Publix corporate headquarters.
One of our clients was Dominick’s in the Chicago area, with about 20 of their stores participating in the online delivery service. This was very cutting edge at that time, and yet they made the commitment. Each store had their own PC and printer, so orders placed by consumers could be downloaded, printed, then picked and packed, staged for delivery to the customer or available for pickup.
At times, it was clear that we were asking a lot of our clients. For example, at one point we received a call in White Plains from one of the Chicagoland grocery locations. Their customers were complaining about not receiving their Prodigy grocery order. The ensuing conversation went something like this:
Grocer: “Hey Prodigy customer service, we are getting complaints that customers didn’t receive their grocery order from your service”
Prodigy: “Ma’am, you need to go to the Prodigy computer in your store and print out the order”.
Grocer: “Where is the Prodigy computer?”
Prodigy: “We don’t know where it was placed at your store, can you look?”
Grocer: “Oh, my manager set that up, but he’s not in the store today. Give me a few minutes”
Grocer: “OK! We found the Prodigy computer. It’s in the broom closet. What do I do now?”
Prodigy: “Let me walk you through the steps of finding, and printing the orders……”
There were several misconceptions about online grocery in those years. Among them:
- Convenience will outweigh selection. Wrong! The initial thought was that a smaller subset of grocery items would be “good enough” for online shoppers But, online grocery shoppers expected exactly the same products online that they did in-store. And they let us know it.
- Convenience will outweigh quality. Wrong! If an item that was picked, packed and delivered wasn’t EXACTLY what the consumer expected, credit was due.
- The economics were challenging. If it took someone at the store 45 minutes to pick and pack an order, and they were being paid union wages, it would eat into the slim (2%) retail profit margin.
- The technology had to catch up to consumer behavior. It might take someone 1 hour to place an online order, only to have the online service disconnected at the 59th minute! Thus, “save and restore” was born.
Early adopters included Grocery Express, Dominics, Schnucks, King Soopers, D’Agostino, Kroger and others.
I think of what a leap of faith the early grocery adopters took every time I get a Fresh Direct order today.
I make sure to leave a nice tip.
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