The Death of the Grocery Store

Let’s ditch the old way of doing things and invest our resources in things that matter

You know the feeling of expecting to have to do an annoying task only to find out someone has done it for you? Maybe your spouse did the laundry you were expecting to have to do over the weekend and now you have fresh mountain breeze smelling sheets. Or how about when your kid or roommate steps up and cleans the messy kitchen you were mentally working yourself up to tackle. Not having to commute to work has been a wake-up call for millions around the world. There is nothing like having an annoying task taken off your plate, for good.

Humans love saving time. We are also resistant to change. These two characteristics can counteract each other. Younger generations look at the older and think they are so old school. Why are you hailing a cab haven’t you heard of Uber. Why do you own a car, it’s called car share. You don’t have any cryptocurrency, you’re such a no-coiner. What are you doing wasting your time going to the grocery store?

The days of going to the grocery stores are numbered. It’s a chore we have put up with for too long. There are already ghost grocery stores popping up around the world. There are companies like Flink and Gorillas riding around cities on their e-bikes, bringing you groceries in 10 minutes or less. Meal kit companies are competing for a spot at your dinner table with increasingly enticing offers and meals.

Even grocery stores themselves are hedging their bets by trying to win your grocery delivery business. Although most charge a fee for the service and are way less flexible when it comes to delivery times. To be fair, they are kind of set in their ways where you are supposed to come to them.

Hold on a minute. Grocery delivery has been around for decades. Why, all of a sudden, would people give up their weekly grocery shop? Let me tell you.

I am a Canadian living in Munich, Germany. I was born in a small city in Ontario, Canada. One of my first jobs as a kid was cutting the brown spots off of vegetables before they hit the shelves. If I were to talk to anyone back home about the disappearing act grocery stores are about to play, they would laugh at me.

Grocery stores try to make shopping an enjoyable experience. I always liked going to Whole Foods, but I was always shocked by the price and hence only go there as a treat. Instead, most weeks I was at a budget grocery store where many of the same products were half price.

A lot of people say they like grocery shopping. Some say getting groceries delivered is lazy — I felt that way until I shook off that ridiculous programming. Grocery delivery is efficient, in more ways than one, and we are an efficient species. Our desire for improved efficiencies has been a part of what has helped us advance as a society. Farming was a shortcut for foraging. Instead of looking for food, we decided to grow our own. We love taking shortcuts, making things easier, and being more productive.

However, we’re not always quick to adopt changes. We wait for others to try it out first. We let the innovators be the guinea pigs. Then the early adopters test out the new service. If those two groups give a positive report to the early majority, the rest of society jumps on board.

Grocery delivery hasn’t ‘delivered’ as of yet, but that’s changing. When it was first introduced, it was a pre-scheduled, costly endeavor. You needed to know what groceries you would need days in advance and pay for a delivery fee. Sure, it saved the shopper time, but the cost and inconvenience of needing to plan ahead weren’t ideal.

The business model for grocery delivery has changed and the technology enabling it has improved. Working adults have also become more technologically savvy and wary of what they spend their time on. If technology can make a Gen Zs or Millennials life easier, they are going to use it. Evidence of these two groups not wanting to waste their time is from their constant career changes. In addition to that, grocery shopping has been something most people do by car, and city dwellers are rethinking car ownership altogether.

In my neighborhood in Munich, there are two grocery delivery startups competing for my business (grocery stores offer delivery too, but they are not in consideration for my business because of their rigid ordering process and cost). They compete by offering the fastest delivery and cheapest groceries. Their competition is everyone’s gain. Gorillas offer 10-minute delivery with 1000s of products at retail prices. Flink brings groceries from every department (including my beloved produce department) to your door as well, in ya, 10 minutes at no cost.

Flexible ordering and free delivery are changing the grocery delivery game. Why would I ever go to the grocery store if I can get the same groceries, for the same price, delivered when I want them at no cost? To be fair, some products are more expensive from Flink, when compared to the discount grocery store I sometimes hit up, but they are on par with the mid-tier grocery chains.

The competitiveness is only going to increase. Even though Europe is way ahead in the grocery delivery space, in Toronto a company is making food deliveries with tiny robots. The tiny robots roaming Toronto’s streets are at risk of being banned due to concerns for the mobility impaired, but I don’t think that will be the last we will see of robot delivery.

Boomers were given the option to have groceries delivered and some of them jumped on board to save time as they drove their kids to hockey. When their time was less of a commodity, they canceled the delivery and started schlepping their own groceries again. They didn’t see the value in paying for groceries to be delivered when they could just do it themselves.

The new generation of millennials and Gen Z differs from their boomer and Gen X parents. We’re more addicted to using technology to improve our lives. We’re not afraid to take the easy road when it makes more sense. We see how our parents spent (wasted) their time and are not going down that same path.

Of course, there will still be grocery stores, but they will increasingly be specialty stores. Nobody will go to the store to get the things they buy every week. There is no point, no joy, no satisfaction in going to pick up toilet paper. You might go to a specialty butcher or a fancy cheese store for the experience, but your obligatory grocery store trips are coming to an end.

If you’re one of those people that says, no that will never be the norm, here is a strange example of humans begging to forgo a convenience, then deciding they actually like the flexibility after all. My spouse’s Master’s program had been online for the past year. When they reintroduced in-person classes, people showed up for the first couple of classes as expected. Since many students were studying from abroad, the school was required to offer hybrid learning (both online and in-person). The students that could attend in person stopped showing up after only one day of lectures. There were just three of thirty students on the second day that showed up in person. Turns out people prefer convenience — who knew?

Giving up grocery shopping will have many positive outcomes. Not only will it save us all a ton of time helping to advance society. That means more time for hobbies, with family and friends or whatever you choose. It will also have a positive environmental impact. No longer does everyone need to drive to the grocery store. Fewer vehicles, powered by electricity or by humans on bikes, will be zipping around the city to deliver you your food when you need it.

You better wave goodbye to your local bank branch while you’re at it. Talk about a waste of prime real estate when finance is something we do online, anyway.