Heather Haddon and Jaewon Kang report in the Wall Street Journal:
Since Amazon.com Inc. bought Whole Foods, stores have been flooded with Prime Now shoppers, under pressure to accurately fill grocery orders for customers to arrive in as little as an hour. A legion of gig-economy shoppers has flooded U.S. supermarkets, scouring shelves for goods customers have ordered online. That is causing consternation. Amazon sees delivery from Whole Foods as a key part of expanding Prime membership. Couriers rushing to collect as many items as possible from shopping lists on their smartphones“usually have a device on a lanyard around their neck and a lost look on their faces,”
Whole Foods Market, once a paragon of leisurely high-end shopping, has become a battleground where well-heeled shoppers fight for elbow room and choice salmon cuts with harried delivery couriers.
Since Amazon.com Inc. bought the natural grocer in 2017, Whole Foods stores have been flooded with what the company calls Prime Now shoppers, under pressure to accurately fill grocery orders for customers to arrive in as little as an hour. As these hired shoppers dash through aisles and bang carts into shelves of quinoa, there is less room for the niceties that many customers felt justified the chain’s “whole paycheck” reputation for high prices.
“The folks running around to fill delivery orders is just unpleasant,” said Julie Gelfat, a San Diego resident who recently abandoned her once-beloved Whole Foods for a natural organic local chain called Lazy Acres Market Inc.
Amazon’s push into grocery has upset the applecart for supermarkets across the U.S. Kroger Co. , Albertsons Cos. and others are expanding online shopping and striking deals with delivery companies such as Instacart Inc.
As a result, a legion of gig-economy shoppers has flooded U.S. supermarkets, scouring shelves for goods customers have ordered online. That is causing consternation in aisle three.
“Instacart drivers think they’re playing Mario Kart,” said Cedric Love, a 30-year-old research assistant from Boston, who tangles with delivery shoppers at his local Wegmans Food Markets Inc. He avoids checkout lines where he can see Instacart shoppers, who wear T-shirts, paying for multiple orders.
Instacart is adding new technology to help couriers find what customers have ordered more quickly, a spokeswoman said. Wegmans notifies staff and Instacart of customer complaints, said spokeswoman Jo Natale. “It is important to us and to Instacart that the experience of shopping at Wegmans remains an enjoyable one,” Ms. Natale said.
Most U.S. consumers still want to squeeze a tomato or peek inside a carton of eggs before buying. A Gallup poll this summer found 81% of respondents hadn’t ordered groceries online. But that is changing. Instacart sales at Kroger and Costco Wholesale Corp. nearly doubled in the last year, according to market-research firm Edison Trends.
Gig shoppers say their job is no picnic. Tim Holley of Ventura County, Calif., fills orders at Sprouts Farmers Market Inc. stores for Instacart. The 32-year-old said he is under too much pressure to think about the comfort of people perusing the fruit and steaks at their leisure.
“It is like living in ‘Supermarket Sweep,’ ” he said, referring to the TV game show where contestants run timed races through a store.
The father of two said the job has tarnished the enjoyment he used to find in family grocery runs to Costco. He has been there too many times filling unwieldy orders like a purchase of 50 cut-rate jugs of olive oil.“Now that I’m shopping for other people’s food, it is losing its luster,” he said.
Amazon sees delivery from Whole Foods as a key part of expanding its Prime membership program. The company has added free two-hour delivery to Prime members from Whole Foods stores in about 90 U.S. markets. Earlier this year, the company said demand for delivery from Whole Foods is exceeding expectations.
Meghan Clark, a consultant and a business owner in Jacksonville, Fla., said she shops at Whole Foods only through Prime Now deliveries. It saves her time, as the closest Whole Foods store is a 40-minute drive from her condominium.
“I’ve ordered before on the plane and had timed it to get in after I arrive,” said Ms. Clark, 47. She values the convenience and often asks the Prime shoppers to bring three to five bags of groceries to her door. “Even if I’m in my jammies, I can go and get it,” she said. “I don’t have to worry about what I look like and being presentable.”
Tensions are running high at Whole Foods, where Amazon’s zeal for rapid delivery is at odds with the chain’s high-end image.
James Allen, a 45-year-old merchandise director in Los Angeles, used to cherish the “elevated grocery experience” he found at his local Whole Foods several times a week. That changed with the arrival of the couriers rushing to collect as many items as possible from shopping lists on their smartphones.
“They’ll usually have a device on a lanyard around their neck and a sort of a lost look on their faces,” he said.
Andrew Conway, a 52-year-old technology project manager in Arlington, Mass., waited 15 minutes last month for vegetarian “chopped liver” at a Whole Foods deli counter. Workers behind the counter told a crowd of half-a-dozen that Amazon shoppers filling multiple orders were slowing things down, he said.
The chaos is more than what I want to deal with at a grocery store,” Mr. Conway said.
A worker in the seafood department at one Midwestern Whole Foods store said Prime Now shoppers frequently clear out her wild salmon supply by midmorning.
“I open my department at six and there are Amazon shoppers already there,” she said.
Amazon is trying to keep the Prime Now pickers out of customers’ way. A Whole Foods in a Milwaukee suburb earlier this year closed its juice bar to make room for an Amazon delivery station, employees said. Workers that once made smoothies now chop watermelon for sale in the store in the backroom.
At another Whole Foods, a coffee bar was razed to make room for an area for the Prime Now shoppers to put their bags. One employee at a Whole Foods in Minnesota said managers placed signs in the storage area reminding Prime Now shoppers to walk on the right side of the corridor to tamp down congestion.
Traffic collisions still happen.
“Every couple of weeks there would be an email saying ‘Some customer in Boston rammed a picker with his cart out of frustration,’ ” said a former employee who worked at a number of Whole Foods stores. “Getting bumped into by carts hurts a lot,” said another worker at a Whole Foods in Florida.
Some customers have worked out hacks to avoid the pickers. John Totter, a 56-year-old piano technician in Rhode Island, makes his Whole Foods runs when the store opens to avoid the lunch and dinner rush of Prime Now couriers.
He stays away altogether during the late August weeks that college students are returning to campus and stocking their apartments via Prime.
“It adds a whole degree of craziness,” he said.
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