Marketing.
I’ve learned the hard way that I have to be careful buying water flavor. The kind I usually get is sweetened with sucralose. One day I saw some lemonade flavor that intrigued me. I bought it, brought it home, and squeezed some into my water. As soon as I tasted it, I poured the tainted glass down the sink. It was flavored with stevia which tastes more artificial than artificial sweetners to me.
I didn’t throw the flavoring away, though. I gave it to my roommates who have no trouble drinking stevia-sweetened crap.
Slight Hijack: I cannot wrap my head around the idea of someone else picking out food for me. How is this a thing???
Lotta people buy mostly packaged food. Who cares who decides which particular box of hamburger helper or can of chili gets tossed in your cart? Assuming they can pick the right brand, flavor, and size, they’re all exactly the same.
Produce is variable in quality, but not that variable in quality. A bin of oranges may have a couple that are obviously nasty, but the shoppers generally aren’t stupid enough to pick the worst of the bin. Ditto meat.
I have only rarely used such services but the challenge for me was never about them selecting the items off the shelf.
I don’t get it either, I love grocery shopping, but I can confirm seeing a LOT of professional shoppers filling orders in the aisles. Sometimes, it’s store staff doing the picking, others appear to be freelancers.
Lotta people would rather be having fun than engaging in a drudgerous chore using up their precious free time.
An awful lot of people don’t pick out their own food. Me, for example. I don’t use a professonal shopper but my husband does all the food shopping. In large part because whenever I’ve tried to do it ( like now, while he’s recovering from a hip replacement ) I get something wrong. Either I bought Lactaid instead of the store brand ( because they didn’t have the store brand with his preferred fat content) or I bought too large a steak or the melon wasn’t the right degree of ripeness. If I’m ever in the position of shopping for myself, it will be Instacart or having the store shop for me ( Instacart will save me from an hour long trip to the restaurant supply store to get pasteurized egg yolks, which are apparently not sold in any supermarket near me)
Due to a serious and debilitating health issue this summer I’ve had to make use of “third party shoppers” for my groceries since April. Which is one reason people use these services - they are disabled/injured/ill/elderly and have trouble doing their own shopping.
There’s also the very busy person who is outsourcing grocery shopping to someone else so they have more time for whatever they consider more important, and people who just loathe grocery shopping so much they will pay someone else to do it for them. Probably other reasons, those are just the big three I’m aware of.
It’s not my first choice, and I’ll be glad when I can do my own shopping again, but I’ve had days this summer where I couldn’t get myself up the flight and a half of stairs to my apartment without having to rest a time or two, much less groceries or anything else requiring carrying (I’ve had to get help with my laundry, too, but that’s a different subject).
I have found that many, if not most (all?) such services really, really, insist on their shoppers trying to make the best substitute if something isn’t found or is unavailable. So the shoppers are under pressure to do so. How adept they are at this varies considerably. Some probably don’t see a difference between 7up and seltzer water. Or a difference between ground beef and ground pork - it’s all meat, right? Some of these companies give their new shoppers training, some don’t, and even when there is training it’s uneven and you still have to contend with the background of the shopper. There really are people out there who don’t understand why someone would reject pork if beef wasn’t available. Or don’t understand why someone else doesn’t consider 7up and seltzer water to be the same thing. Personally, I don’t think that attitude meshes well with the job but people being ill-suited to their job is hardly a new phenomena.
Truth is, there’s a certain number of customers who aren’t that fussy and really don’t care. There are probably people who’d be happy to hand someone else $100 and say “buy me something to eat, I don’t care what”. As someone who very much does care I have to be very clear when placing an order that I do NOT want substitutes if certain items aren’t available, just skip them. In other cases I have the ability to name an acceptable substitute or leave a note to the shopper on what to do if there is an issue. And hope to Og the shopper actually reads it.
Another place this can go awry is that most of the shopping software has an option for the shopper to text you while they are shopping so you can answer questions. I am careful to carry my phone around and respond promptly. This vastly improves my results. Other people do not make themselves available (for all I know they have good reason to be unreachable).
So… maybe you have a shopper who can’t find something, can’t reach the customer, and has no instructions on what to do or preferred substitutes. So now the shopper has to guess. Sometimes that works better than other times.
On top of that, over the past few months one shopper in particular has picked up most of my orders. He is excellent at doing this job. I genuinely do trust this person to make selections for me because he has been that good. The fact I trust someone else to that extent is extraordinary given my list of food allergies and, after two anaphylactic episodes, some justifiable paranoia around food yet I have learned to trust him. He also gave me his personal number so before I place an order I can give him a heads-up I’m going to, so if he’s working that day/time it increases the chance he will be able to pick up my order. As a result of shopping for me once a week for most of the past few months he has a decent notion of my orders/needs/wants/preferences. To the point that if I asked for red grapes and if there are no red grapes to be found he’ll suggest that maybe the plums look good this week or maybe I want a honeydew melon? Seems a big leap from red grapes to honeydew, but if you know me you understand I just want some fruit I like and I’m not that fussy on exactly what fruit. (Although he’s been giving me a reliable heads up on Rainier cherries, asking me if I want some even when I don’t ask for them because he knows they’re one of my favorites, I can’t get out much, and I trust him to select good ones). Other customers, of course, will have other preferences and needs. If someone winds up shopping frequently for a particular customer (and a lot of 3rd party shoppers do have regulars) they will likely be able to make non-intuitive substitutions simply because they know their customers.
Customers also change their minds. Most services allow you to make changes until check-out times. Sometimes a weird substitution is due to a customer texting the shopper with a change.
And of course, some people are just screw-ups.
Worst one I had so far was a woman who arrived at my building, declared that she “didn’t do apartments”, and just left my groceries sitting in the parking lot. I called the shopping service and raised merry hell over it, especially as that was one of the days I was really weak and simply not able to get my groceries up the stairs. They wound up sending someone else to haul them up the stairs for me so…. OK I guess? And gave me free delivery on my next order and a $20 credit along with apologies.
I’m in an unusual spot because not only have I made use of these services for the last few months but prior to that I was meeting these shoppers as a cashier. A number of such shoppers I already knew before they showed up at my door. Which is why I have always been careful to be available for questions, as I have seen just how frustrating it is for them to need the answer to a question and not get a response from the customer. Also, being clear on any notes I add to my order.
Anyhow - I hope that is somewhat enlightening. This sort of service isn’t for everyone but it’s good to have as an option.
My niece is a foster mom. That’s her job. She’s single with 7 kids ranging from infants to kindergarten age. You can imagine the “fun” of single-handedly dragging that unruly brood through a grocery store or a Target. Which free hand will push the cart or pick items off the shelf?
Walmart provides 100% of her worldly goods. Everything she buys comes from them via online order. Usually dictated by voice into her phone while both hands are busy feeding, cleaning, or grooming one, two, or three wriggling bundles of raging kidly nuttiness.
Having marveled at her efforts, I honestly can’t see it being done any other way. She thinks the idea of personally going into a store to be wacky; who the hell has time for that nonsense?
I enjoy grocery shopping. Sometimes I’ll see something not on my list and it looks good.
I would have to trust the person shopping for me.
Yeah, about half the time I go to the store (and I go almost every single day), I don’t have a set meal in mind. I’ll look at what’s on sale, and design something around that. The other half of the time, yes, I want to make a certain dish, but even then, I may slightly alter what I buy based on price or how the produce or meat look. There’s been many times I’ve been wanting to, say, cook something with red peppers, but I’m not paying $3.99/fucking pound for them (when they’re on sale, it’s as low as $0.99/lb – $1.99-2.49/lb is what I consider fair), so I’ll look and see if there’s anything around I could substitute. Sometimes, I find “ancient red pepper,” a non-bell sweet pepper, for my target price and I buy that instead.
I do all the cooking in my house, so I do almost all the grocery shopping (minus Sam’s Club items, which is my wife’s domain.) But I understand many/most people do not enjoy grabbing groceries in the least.
I much prefer doing my own grocery shopping. As I mentioned earlier, I shop sales, which means checking the online and for the store and making up a list, which I pretty much stick to. Unfortunately with some of the health issues I’ve been having recently there are times when I just don’t have the energy to do so. There have been times when I’ve gotten to the store and been halfway through my shopping when I suddenly almost collapse.
I occasionally use Instacart; the shoppers I’ve gotten have been pretty good. I don’t use them for produce for the reasons others have mentioned. When I’m making up the list I still stay with sale items; I’m able to specify alternates if items I want are out of stock, and I get text messages from the shopper to alert me to substitutes.
Even when most or many items aren’t pre-packaged, it’s quite common for one person in a household to do the shopping on at least some occasions, and to bring home the groceries that several people will eat. Does this strike you as odd also?
I’d rather do my own shopping; but long before the invention of modern shopping services, lots of people ate food that someone else picked out for them.
I am very particular about certain produce items, so I wouldn’t want someone else choosing peaches for me, but for most other things, especially packaged foods, I have no problem with someone else picking out my stuff.
Isn’t the thread asking if “You” picked up the wrong item inadvertently?
Not whether 10+ paragraphs are needed to tell us why someone would use a shopper.
Back in the day, Mom shopped, Mom cooked, Mom served, Mom cleaned. You ate it or went to bed hungry. Not saying that’s right, it’s just how it was.
If you are so very particular about your needs it behooves you to get to the store. If you can’t (whatever reason)you’ll have to take what you get.
We’ll all likely end up eating what others serve us. One way or another.
Yeah, this is pretty much where I am about it. A case of beer is a no-brainer, but I wanna see the steak I’m buying.
I get why people use these services, but it ain’t for me. Back to the thread topic…
One time I bought mayo with olive oil in it. It was pretty despicable. I grabbed pumpkin cream cheese instead of the salmon stuff because the label is nearly identical at a quick glance. That got returned!
The mistake I make the most is buying grapes instead of SEEDLESS grapes. They get eaten, but I get stink eye from my kid until they’re gone. And I know I do it and yet it’s a mistake I’ve repeated several times. Hell, I might do it tomorrow too when I shop.
We bought scallions instead of shallots.
Recipe called for shallots, Dad wrote down green onions on the list, I picked them up, and when I got ready to cut up the shallots, checked in on it, and sure enough. We had regular yellow onion or green onions, no shallots.
Dinner was fine– maybe a bit spicy– but fine anyway.
And the brown rice noodles were a success. I wasn’t worried, exactly, but Dad bought the wrong kind of rice noodles for a recipe I made a few months ago. I didn’t like the food enough to try a third time, but not being sure what dinner was supposed to be, I was a little nervous about the brown rice noodles.
(Our present division of labor– I help choose recipes for dinner, Dad comes up with some menu ideas himself, Dad writes the grocery list and shops it with “help” from Mom. I cook with help from Mom, we all eat, Dad does much of the post-dinner clean-up, sometimes with help from other people. Mom has knee pain and sometimes back pain which make standing for long enough to cook problematic, and enough cognitive decline that she’s not great at any part of dinner prep that requires thinking. But she likes to be involved, so she cut up the beef for last night’s dinner).
It’s a common enough mistake. And if he’s from New South Wales, Aus, he has an even better excuse as that’s what they call scallions/green onions/spring onions there, to my understanding. Good thing is, you can sub them out for regular onions, red onions (as I often do), white parts of the green onions, and even add a little bit of garlic and still be fine with the recipe. They are their own flavor and not any of these or a mix of these exactly, but a substitution will not at all ruin the recipe.
no the pouches are popular because they’re marketed as convenient ready to eat quick snack/lunch on the go and often flavored
the full house/hallmark movie queen used to do commercials for starkist when they came out with theirs and the pitch was “ these were so good and easy i could eat one in-between takes on the set “