Shopping Solution?

[thesshhh]

Why don’t all the supermarkets close their doors to customers, get everybody ordering online or by phone, have the shop staff fetching their items from the shelves (thereby ensuring customers don’t have more than they should), and handing their orders over at arranged times as they queue in a supervised orderly fashion? What do you reckon to that?

[allenlondon]

Sounds a bit sensible, so it won’t catch on...

[jno]

seeing how my broadband has been crumbling over the last couple of weeks, that would be a shortcut to starvation for me.

How many phone lines do you think your local Sainsbury's has? And how many people to answer them?

[ichkeria]

It's completely unworkable

[fiction-factory]

So just use the click and collect option?
I think they'd need to more than double their staff

[cassa333]

Not everyone has internet.
Not enough people to deliver.
Not enough vans to deliver.

[ichkeria]

Apart from the 101 other reasons why it wouldn't work, what about all the other shops that don't do delivery or online ordering.

I couldn't see them being overwhelmed by customers crowding into their cramped premises or anything :-)

[carolegif]

No deliveries for two or three weeks at most supermarkets. We have enough for about two weeks if we stretch things out.

[chrissa1]

My daughter with her twins always has her Asda orders delivered. However, she can’t get a slot for weeks.

[follyfancier]

I tried to register with some supermarkets this morning but nobody is taking new customers at the moment

[ToraToraTora]

they are not equipped to do that. They are only geared up for a small percentage of their customers to be for delivery/collection. They cannot increase that instantly.

[ToraToraTora]

they whole delivery system is a recent thing, they only do it because their competitors do it, In reality it's a tiny part of the business.

[emmie]

not a good plan, sainsbury has shut down their telephone lines, you get a recorded message,
and can't get online to them either....

[aelmpvw]

just to add to the doom and gloom, how long will it be before we start having power cuts?

[emmie]

heavens i hope not, my freezer is full to keep me going for the foreseeable future.

[barry1010]

Apart from Ocado who is set up for deliveries and doesn't have traditional shops every supermarket makes a loss with every delivery - this was the situation in 2014 and it is not so bad now but it still costs
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2707071/Supermarket-giants-lose-100million-year-online-delivery-services-Cost-delivery-means-effectively-paying-customers-shop-them.html

They only do it because they know that if they don't their customers will go elsewhere and probably never go back.

[dannyk13]

Not enough drivers or hours in the day.Totally unworkable.

[grumpy01]

Also Danny,probably not enough vans.

[drmorgans]

Ocado might be internet-only but it doesn't make a profit. The business might be growing but it is still relatively small scale.

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/comment/2019/02/13/trying-to-make-sense-of-ocado-s-share-price/

[fiction-factory]

Think of all the people you see wandering round our big 4 supermarkets filling trolleys- maybe a hundred customers at any one time per store. Order pickers would be quicker but you'd probably still need 50 members of staff at any one time with trolleys. And you'd need a team of maybe 10 admin staff to take the orders, bill them, resolve queries over substituted goods. You'd also need a handover team of maybe 10 people to hand over the packs to make sure everyone gets the right bags. I don't think supermarkets have anything like that number of staff at any one time

[thesshhh]

Who mentioned vans or drivers? No deliveries are proposed here