Stuck in a Virtual Grocery Rut

Hi folks, it's Karen here. As many of you know, I am huge fan of online grocery shopping. One silver lining of the pandemic is that more retailers began offering online grocery shopping, and more people discovered its benefits. But with that, came some unanticipated drawbacks. Chief among them - online grocery shopping can actually make it easier to get into a food rut!

If you think about how those online grocery shopping apps are designed, this makes sense. Anyone that logs into their online grocery account will see a feature such as "buy again" or "repeat my order." This makes it all too easy and tempting to simply recreate your last cart and buy the same foods over and over again. I have heard this story from countless clients over the past couple years. This is not always a bad thing, as we will discuss in our Food Ruts lesson this week. But it does create a tension between convenience and food boredom, and we need to make sure we find balance between the two.

A recent Google search yielded an article about a phenomenon called the "grocery rut." According to the article:

"The ‘grocery rut’ has emerged as one of the biggest flaws in online grocery shopping, as efficiency in reordering overtakes variety and inspiration. During lockdown, lots of online shoppers were reportedly irritated by grocery retailers for making it easy to buy the same thing over and over but not to find new food and products to try. One of the big challenges for online retail going forward is how to incorporate more discovery. Can a website recreate the idea of walking through the supermarket and seeing the special offers at the end of the aisle?"

So until the technology catches up with our desire for more "discovery" during the online grocery shopping experience, what can we do? Here are are some tips:

• Use the "recommended for you" feature, when it is available (I know Wal-Mart offers this). This section lists products you might like based on your past buying history. This is useful because it gives you suggestions that bear resemblance to the characteristics of the foods you typically buy (i.e. whole grain, gluten-free, organic, vegetarian, etc). It also knows from the market research what other people who shop like you tend to buy (those store loyalty cards gather a lot of data!)

• When you are looking at a specific item on the website, scroll down and you will often see a feature such as "you might also like or "related items." Again, this can give you alternatives that are similar to what you normally buy, but different enough to introduce some variety.

• One thing I love to do to is just type things into the search bar. For example, I might type "chicken" and see what comes up. I know what to expect in the first few result hits, but as I scroll through, I might find interesting options such as marinated chicken, chicken sausages, and air-fried frozen chicken (all stuff I discovered on the Kroger website!) This option can take a little extra time, but I find it's worth it when you're really in the mood for something new.

• Another option is to actually go into the grocery store once in a while (gasp!) Go with the intent of finding new things. The visual and sensory experience of the grocery store is hard to replicate, so going there when you feel a food rut coming on might make sense. Until the technology catches up, nothing online can replicate that walking-down-the aisle experience!