Grocery shopping is one of those things that -- despite a lot of people really trying -- has remained a stubbornly in-person activity. However, the pandemic did give online grocery shopping a significant boost, and lot of that has stuck, even if it has been trending slightly downward from its peak. Here are a few slides from Dan Frommer's Consumer Trends: 2024 Food & Wellness Special report:

Part of the challenge may be that the majority of people say they actually like grocery shopping, and doing so in a physical store:

So it is very possible that, for the foreseeable future, there will always be a large segment of buyers who prefer to shop in-store. But then again, if you asked me these same questions, I would also tell you that I like grocery shopping and that I prefer buying in-store. However, that doesn't mean I wouldn't be open to alternatives. I just haven't explored and found a suitable online option.

At the same time, and according to the same Consumer Trends Survey, about 10% of Americans say they currently dislike grocery shopping. Maybe this is the same 10% who are right now shopping online. Either way, this is already a large segment of people who would rather not go into a grocery store.

Intuitively, as the online offerings get better, one would expect this number to grow. Here, for example, is an interesting overview of the service Hungryroot. One part "meal kit" delivery and one part online grocery shopping, the company uses machine learning and algorithms to determine what its customers might want to buy. Already, about 70% of what it sells is picked automatically.

On the back end, McKean explains, among other actions, Hungryroot is “clustering” its new customer with other users who have answered its onboarding survey similarly and have already been with the service for multiple years. “And so we can say, ‘okay, people who filled out that signup flow like you… they loved these top recipes with high probability, so we think you’re going to love these recipes with high probability’.”

What I like about this is that it requires fewer decisions; it has the potential to feel like you have a private chef (one that learns what you like and adjusts accordingly); and it promotes dietary variety. For the typical American, 75% of what they buy in a grocery store is the exact same as what they bought the last time. There's very little variety, because it's always easier not to have to think.

Given this stat, it is maybe surprising that this 75% hasn't become more automated for more people. Perhaps it's the 25% that keeps most of us going into stores. I'm not sure, but I think I'm ready to try a service like Hungryroot.

Given the option, I will buy online as opposed to offline. About the only thing I consistently buy in-person is groceries. Food shopping remains a persistently in-store activity for most of the market. Though some European countries seem to have much higher online food shopping rates.

It is for reasons like this that Amazon opened a new small-format grocery store this past Monday called Amazon Go. The big game changer – which is currently making the rounds on the internet – is the fact that there are no check out counters. You simply check-in with their app when you walk into the store and then leave with whatever you want. Your phone will automatically charge you for whatever you picked up.

Finally! Grocery store check outs suck. (The store is currently in beta and will not open to the general public until 2017.)

But perhaps even more meaningful is all the data that Amazon will be collecting about our grocery shopping habits. This will scare some of you, I’m sure. But I can tell you that there are a slew of things that I buy regularly. And I bet that if you analyzed the data, the purchases would happen at fairly regular intervals: bananas every x days, orange juice every y days, etc.

So once Amazon Go learns what I like to buy, I am sure that it will then start to try and sell it to me online, along with some sort of subscription. If it can assure me that the produce is fresh and the expiry dates are far out (if they’re not, I want to be able to take a picture and get a refund), then there’s probably a good chance that I, as well as others, could be converted to online food shoppers.