Team-BHP - Where are you getting your groceries & supplies?

I managed in our neighbour hood grocery shop. He had made arrangements with social distancing and stuff. The nearby vegetable and fruit markets were open as always - and it's our usual place. So , we didn't miss the veggies and fruits. Our association had arranged for DMart to visit one day and that helped us buy the normal usual monthly provisions. Big basket slots were hard to find , but I did manage two slots that I was lucky to find , for the bread and butter and cheese and other stuff that I didn't find in our local grocer.

Aside , we had our regular supplies of Pudina, Corriander, Plantain leaves , papayas, tomatoes and curry leaves fresh from our gardens. We also had a fresh stack of Bananas that has come up - should be ready to cut in a week max. Milk was regular. Newspaper also was from the regular guy. We are strict vegetarians and it's working fine thus far. What we miss is the visit to the Metro shops or the other super markets, which I guess isn't too big a deal now.

Now, during lockdown, I am living in a small village near Karnataka -Kerala border.
Groceries (including cattle food) are taken care by a store approximately 8 kms away. I write all that we need in a piece of paper and send them by WhatsApp. Everything will be packed by 9 AM next day and ready to be picked up. I do this once in 10 days.
We have a few desi cows and milk, ghee, curd, paneer and so on are taken care of. Vegetables (leafy vegetables, different gourds, raw banana, sweet potato, tapioca, spinach, chillies etc.), coconuts and fruits (guava, pineapple, star apples, bananas etc.) are sourced from the small farm we own. We grow and stock up rice needed for whole year.
Small grocery shops, vegetable shops, medical stores, cooperative milk society, gas agencies etc are open till 12 noon every day. However, people visiting these places strictly manage distance between each other and avoid visiting unless absolutely needed.

Why can't we come up with a simple app (or maybe an extension of Dunzo/Swiggy) where you place your order of groceries at a nearby store and are assigned a pick up time (say 15 minute slot). Once the order is ready, you get the bill in app (based on what was available) and all payment is managed online and when you go to the store, your groceries are all packed - you say out your order number, collect the bag and walk away.

No long queues, no prolonged human interaction.

Quote:

Originally Posted by akshaymahajan (Post 4790510)

Recently, at Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan City, Reliance JioMart launched this form of operation. The customer needs to submit a WhatsApp "HI" to number + 91 88500 08000 and in answer, he will get a site URL where he can order his groceries and pick his nearest point/store. In order to collect groceries, customers will visit at the pre-informed time.

Samdarshi

Quote:

Originally Posted by akshaymahajan (Post 4790510)

Why do you think Facebook hastily signed up the Reliance JIO bandwagon?
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/fa...-reliance-jio/

Pretty soon you will use a combo of facebook app and whatsapp to communicate and deal with the local shops including grocers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpha1 (Post 4792082)

Reliance doing it at Reliance stores makes sense and then potentially expanding their footprint to all cities. The issue with that is that its not hyper-local.

But why would this partnership enable roll out to local grocers?

Am currently in Mumbai.

Have ordered thrice from Dmart. They deliver whatever is available on the day of delivery. The third time was the only occasion on which they could deliver more than 50% of the items I ordered.

Will now shift to Pantry for supplies since Amazon has started services.

Tried ordering from Nature's basket. Disappointing experience to say the least. They didn't deliver any of the packaged foodstuff and the quality of veggies was way below average.

Yesterday we received a delivery from a local vegetable vendor and the veggies and fruits are good, considering the situation, so will stick to him for now.

I went out total of 3 times during lockdown for essentials. One was for the 20L water can 5 days after lockdown as nearby store said no delivery only collect.

The other 2 were grocery trips to Namdharis. Here's my experience.

Milk - Ordered from Namdharis subscription and it was reliable through the lockdown. No issues.

Groceries - Namdharis app is absolutely useless. I used to order 15-16 items listed as in stock. Finally half would be delivered along with milk in the morning and most were yesterday unsold vegetables / fruits. So for fruits and vegetables I had no choice but to go go every 10 days.

After the lockdown all e-commerce portals were down as the uncertainty of the delivery boys getting whacked.

Amazon:
Amazon was the first to open essentials so I placed an order from there and it was delivered in 3 days. I figured Amazon has figured it out whereas Flipkart lost the plot.

Flipkart:
After a week, I saw Flipkart was back online with Supermart. The next order I placed, I realised that Flipkart had more items in stock and Amazon was all over the place. Amazon would show products in stock but when checking out they would disappear and show out of stock. This kept happening.

I ordered with Flipkart and it was delivered in record time the next day.

Suddenly Amazon was not having majority of the items I needed and would need to buy 1-2 items and not wait for a bunch of items to be in stock. Their delivery was also after 4-5 days on some occasions.

Flipkart delivered essentials 3 times to me within 2 days and almost all items available. The best part of Flipkart was the last 2 orders were delivered by Uber taxis. They tied up with Uber to give the drivers some incomes for each delivery trip thereby tapping into more resources into the ground for delivery. This was ingenuous at this time to ramp up fast and temporarily.

For fruits and vegetables I now moved to Zomato which has Namdharis supermarket listed so they pickup and drop the fruits / vegetables within an hour.

I didn't mention Big basket cause they were the worst. No inventory management no delivery slots (usually more than a week later). You put stuff in cart then place order, half the stuff will be not available. Moreover higher prices, many times above MRP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vid6639 (Post 4802051)

Groceries - Namdharis app is absolutely useless. I used to order 15-16 items listed as in stock. Finally half would be delivered along with milk in the morning and most were yesterday unsold vegetables / fruits. So for fruits and vegetables I had no choice but to go go every 10 days.

For fruits and vegetables I now moved to Zomato which has Namdharis supermarket listed so they pickup and drop the fruits / vegetables within an hour.

Yes, the Namdharis app is a hit or miss. And their billing is also crap. There is no way to get a refund for the items they have not delivered. I have sent mail and pinged the customer care through the app but no luck.

After seeing your post, I ordered using Zomato. While the order arrived in an hour and all the items were present, I feel the quantity is less. For example, I got more quantity of apples and mangoes when I ordered a Kg each directly through Namdhari when compared to Zomato. Wonder if Namdhari is reducing the quantity factoring the Zomato commission.

Big Basket
Noticed the following - if anything is on sale, you will most likely not be able to order it. Also, they have a feature to notify you if that item becomes available, but you will have to pay a delivery charge. This is true even with essential items - seems there is no penalty on them for not having items on stock, they don't even have to bother whether you are served or not. Ultimately, you will have to go to the local store to get it.

Second important issue - frozen items delivered warm. If this is possible, how is a customer to know if a frozen item has been kept at the specified temperature throughout? Serious problem - this is a failure of the regulatory authorities also.

In case some one is looking to source some good apples,
someone I know has started a direct home delivery of apples from Kinnaur, Himachal

These apples are the best in himachal. The initiative is based on the online store model, wherein you can place orders on the website, and the apples are delivered at your doorstep, without the requirement/ involvement of any storage/ middlemen enroute.

Here's the link.

https://himflavours.com/

Disclaimer - While I know the person who has started this initiative, I have no commercial involvement in the venture of any sorts.

Regards

A great article on how Jio is putting the traditional FMCG distributor model out of business.

Quote:

SANGLI, India, Nov 22 (Reuters) - For eight straight days, household goods salesman Vipresh Shah has failed to sell a single pack of Dettol soap to the storekeepers who have been buying from him ever since he took over his family business as a teenager, 14 years ago.
Shah is an official distributor for Britain's Reckitt Benckiser in Vita, near Sangli city, around 200 miles south of Mumbai. But he said once-loyal customers now point to an app - JioMart Partner - on their smartphones showing prices up to 15% lower, instead of placing orders.

Whether you buy online or offline, you'll indirectly soon be ordering through Jio anyway.

Full article: https://www.reuters.com/markets/euro...op-2021-11-22/