Monoprix customer for two years, I can relate this is no false advertising or demonstration of intent : it works like this in real life.
Monoprix live in a nice niche of upper class consumers living in the center of rich towns. The produits are kind of expensive, but the service is neat.
I agree, but it also seems trivial for Amazon to integrate this into their Amazon Fresh service which is grocery delivery to your house.
When you finish walking around shopping you put your basket/ cart into a waiting slot and some Fresh delivery person grabs it and loads it into their truck. They already have your payment and shipping information too.
Good point. Well, they automated the checkout process (through some "machine learning" "computer vision" black magic that I still don't understand). They might as well have it so that the items in the waiting slot get picked up by a drone that gets it to your place before you even get there.
Have you checked whether one of your local markets will deliver your order after you checkout? It's quite common in NYC and I know at least one of the local Whole Foods locations in the Boston area does (in addition to the usual Instacart online option).
How does the checkout part work? Obviously you can't just leave your trolley at the checkout - they need your address and need to bill you. Is there a membership card you quickly scan or something like that?
Two ways:
1. You pay and leave your delivery informations.
2. You're a regular customer and have an membership account for that.
I can see a lot of people living outside the city using this service because Monoprix is near their workplace. They go after work, ask for delivery, go back home by train, and then are delivered the day after for instance.
You sign up for free. Then you can just leave your trolley (along with your phone number so they find you in their DB) and go home and will pay upon delivery. I used this for some time and it was indeed very convenient
This is still a regular supermarket with cashiers. Your can either :
- leave your trolley to the shipping service and pay everything when your are shipped.
- leave your trolley, pay everything there pick any item your want and be shipped the rest later. (Depending on the crowd, there will likely be checkout line)
- go to the cashier (or an automatic machine), pay there and bring your stuff home yourself. (Checkout line here also)
Amazon does these things for PR only. The only place checkout lines have ever been an issue for me is the Whole Foods at Union Square NYC and that's a rare situation.
Fyi french supermarkets like carrefour or leclerc already have solutions where they give you a scanner and you scan yourself the stuff you buy and just pay when exiting. Very fast and convenient.
Here in Belgium the Carrefour also introduced that system. It's fast if the system doesn't (randomly) pick you out for inspection. Nevertheless I like the system.
What I have also seen in the Hypercarrefour in Bruges that they scan your groceries when waiting in line to the checkout. Then they print a ticket on their mobile printer which you just need to give to the checkout and pay.
A local Delhaize (Food Lion in the US) experimented with a fixed POS where you needed to take out all your groceries, self-scan and pay. I have also used the same system at Tesco in Prague. Not the most pleasant system in comparison than the mobile version Carrefour and also Auchan uses where you just walk through the store with a mobile scanner.
Other local retailers (colruyt, aldi, lidl, Albert Hein) are more classic in that regards.
"t's often broken, and some items are subject to different buying conditions and can't be purchased via these self-service checkout lanes, like alcohol, or "luxury" items with high margins, like razor blades."
To be honest that's not a problem when using self-scan at Carrefour. Only if you buy alcohol or tabaco they may ask for your age or if you are picked out for an inspection. There is no limit in what you buy.
Carrefour is not the only shop here to have introduced it, I have seen it in Match as well (in Leuven).
The smaller shops of Carrefour, the "express shops" don't have it iether, so not all stores of carrefour do, but then again they are smaller shops and there usually are not _that_ much people.
Colruyt, aldi and lidl might consider the expense of the machine + people to do the random inspection as a cost they do not want, as they do aim to keep the price as low as possible. Wether you pay people to sit at a checkout or wait to check other people, the amount of money you might end up saving might have been considered not significant.
That's really not limited to France though. I've seen the same at Tesco, Waitrose and Saintsbury in the UK, in several chains in China, in a bunch of Germany as well (Aldi?), and in Australia (Whoolworths, Coles...). Ikea has had that for a while as well. So has Metro all over the world, obviously.
I have been using self-service checkouts for more than a decade in most countries. I'd be surprised if that was considered news.
Amazon Go and instant payment systems are a different topic entirely though.
Also, "very fast" is debatable: it's often broken, and some items are subject to different buying conditions and can't be purchased via these self-service checkout lanes, like alcohol, or "luxury" items with high margins, like razor blades.
Quite often, if given the choice of an almost empty till queue or a self-service line, I'll pick the almost empty till queue. It's often more efficient.
Self-service is great for 24/7 supermarkets though. I remember really huge Tesco stores in the UK that are but where you can shop at 3AM and use the self-service. Most employees at this time of night are the stock management people, and there's only one or 2 cashiers left (and security, obviously). The rest is self-service. For that scenario, it's indeed convenient.
With the handheld ones (first picture) you just scan the products and put them into your bag when you pick them up at the store aisle. To pay, scan a special barcode at the checkout and put your card into the machine.
No need to rebag your stuff, shows you your current total to pay at all times, and it's simple enough that I've never seen it out of order. Oh, and there's no risk of getting stuck behind that family that apparently wants to get the whole year's food shopping out of the way.
Plus in The Netherlands has this as well. Same with Albert Heijn [1]. I don't know how it works at AH, but at Plus I do. When you're at the cashier, the cashier takes 2 products out to sample if you scanned them. You can then pass (right now they're lenient with customers forgetting since its still kinda new).
With Albert Heijn you can also order online and they'll deliver it (not all areas supported yet), and with Plus you can order online from an app. The disadvantage with not picking your own groceries (as being outlined in the video of this article) is that you can't pick an article which expires later, or looks/smells fresher. You don't get to check if your eggs are all intact. You don't get to check if none of your cookies are broken. Etc. Not saying that always matters, but it can be important.
I'm really surprised stores like Costco and Sams Club haven't adopted this yet. You have to waiting very long lines at these stores and still have to wait again at the door for someone to check your receipt against what's in your cart.
This would make shopping there much more appealing.
I don't have a membership to any of the warehouse stores any longer but they seem to be the only places that routinely check receipts at the door in my experience. It's unclear to me why they feel a need to do this when Walmart, for example, doesn't.
I like shopping online with Amazon, but I would hate seeing groceries taken away with unmanned dystopian and probably very dysfunctional automated outlets like on the Amazon video.
What happens when something goes wrong? -- The automated video system thinks you have taken two products when you have taken just one; or it thinks you have taken one and you took two, and a security guy who has zero authority over how the system operates, or understanding of it, accuses you of stealing; or a discount was advertised on the shelf but not implemented on the system; etc.
What happens if Amazon decides, for some reason that they will not explain and that you can't appeal, to cancel your account? Then you can't even go grocery shopping?
The future is much less exciting than it used to be.
Personally I've found Amazon's customer service is pretty reasonable (sometimes you need to dig in the site to find something). I know they aren't a great company in other ways - their workers are poorly paid and overworked, but that's one thing I'm not worried about.
> What happens if Amazon decides, for some reason that they will not explain and that you can't appeal, to cancel your account? Then you can't even go grocery shopping?
Only if they have a monopoly, if this proves successful I expect other shops will start investing in this too (or licence the technology). You're just as likely to have an issue currently if you live in Bumfuck, Nowhere and the only store around refuses to serve you because they suspect you of stealing.
The only store in Bumfuck doesn't operate a giant online marketplace and therefore is very unlikely to refuse to serve me because of a computer glitch, or because someone somewhere hacked my account, or because I changed the username on my Kindle (https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5gvgdl/using_a_amaz...)
In any case I can always walk up to the manager at Bumfuck General Store and resolve any disagreement we might have, simply by... talking. Also, said manager is in charge, he can make decisions and reverse previous decisions.
Amazon employees aren't in charge of anything, the system is. They can read what's on their screen, and press a few buttons on screens that have choices, and that's it.
The problem with automation isn't only that robots are displacing humans, but that at the same time it's changing humans into robots (dumb ones).
Amazon's pursuit of the grocery business is precisely the opposite of focusing solely on one product. The direct line from books to bananas runs through the land of conceit. Amazon's legacy infrastructure is built around the long tail items that can sit on a warehouse shelf for five years without spoiling.
Amazon is not a plucky young startup. It's a twentyfive year old enterprise that hires MBA's in the hope of staying relevant. It's last major success was AWS, a product that scratched its own itch and monetized necessary but idle capacity. Most importantly it was B2B.
In B2C Amazon has been incrementing extraction since the original Kindle. Prime is Sam's Club + Netflix + arcane pricing and shipping terms. Echo is Siri for shopping. All of it comes on the back of higher prices whenever Amazon's algorithms suggest it can get away with it.
And that's the real way to judge the status of Amazon. It structures transactions in its favor and requires consumer vigilance. The Monoprix pitch is really about that more than anything else. The pitch provides a plausible explanation of how the transaction works and implies that the ordinary norms of human transactions are at work. The cashier is going to charge everyone the same price that's on the shelf and the delivery person is not going to implement surge pricing.
How so? I live in Seattle, and Amazon's placement of their test stores has been quite poor (picking a roadway on the wrong side of a major bridge, where from 2pm to 6:30pm its a parking lot), they have set them up exclusively for people who drive, and their previous efforts of grocery delivery have fizzled out, with Amazon Fresh having significantly declined in usage to the point that Amazon Prime customers are getting $50 free vouchers to use on Amazon Fresh on a monthly basis.
Amazon can't push the volume needed to compete with the heavyweight in this region (Kroger, thru their Fred Meyer, Safeway, QFC & Albertsons brands control 90% of the grocery volume in Seattle) thus their prices will always be significantly higher. That combined with poor location and a core misunderstanding of their market (eg. who in your average household is buying groceries and what goods/price point will they buy at) will limit their potential market.
Ah shoot, that is right! Safeway and Albertsons merged, don't know why I thought they'd become part of Kroger. That being said, in the Puget Sound Region (where Amazon is trying to launch this) 90% of the market is controlled by the aforementioned players. It'd take massive volume to get close to the price points any of them can hit, cause SuperValu and other wholesalers are not gonna give Amazon volume discounts otherwise.
I have the same opinion, actually. I was commenting on the state of mind of the Monoprix executives who probably thought "how unfair it was that Amazon got all the PR".
Is this grocery charging 'Whole Paycheck' prices? The fact that they invest into this well-produced video, while referencing Amazon GO, located thousands of miles away in a different country, suggests their target demographic are tech-friendly and, by transitivity, affluent.
How about Amazon GO? Is that a toy / experience / novelty for affluent tech-savvy early adopters?
Sorry if I'm not political correct. I tried. My intent is not to troll or offend people who do shop at Whole Foods. I actually live in San Francisco, 10 feet away from a Whole Foods. I previously lived in Seattle, too. I feel that, compared to other fields such as Finance or law, tech tend to be more self-conscientious and guilty about income inequality.
>Is this grocery charging 'Whole Paycheck' prices? The fact that they invest into this well-produced video, while referencing Amazon GO, located thousands of miles away in a different country, suggests their target demographic are tech-friendly and, by transitivity, affluent.
Not any more than e.g. Whole Foods and Krogers consumers.
>while referencing Amazon GO, located thousands of miles away in a different country
You make it sound difficult. In fact Amazon Go made global news, and we have this web thing.
> their target demographic are tech-friendly and, by transitivity, affluent.
Their target demographic is not tech-friendly at all, quite the opposite, but indeed affluent: they are located in the center of rich french cities, where wealthy, often more than 50, people live.
I'd say that it's roughly 20% more expensive than average (at least that's what I see when I compare to a supermarket like Leclerc) but they're well located, easy walking distance from the center of the cities and perfect for people like me who don't want to get into a car to go shopping.
They also have an online delivery service which works really well.
They do tend to have a bit more choice when it comes to fine foods and sell some premium brands like Valrhona that you wouldn't necessarily find in normal supermarkets.
I wouldn't exactly call them "regular". They are mostly in the center of cities, their price are high-ish, but not crazy, so you often see people with no car (old people but also students) living in the city shopping there, as well as wealthy people. Their products are rather good.
No way. Monoprix is definetely a high end supermarket, not because it's organic or high quality food only (unlike whole food) but because it's always located in weathy areas of inner towns (your find Monoprix in the XVIth and XVIIth district, not in the XXth).
I agree with the analogy, but I would add that it's usually located where your would have a Walgreens in the US, which is much smaller than the average Target.
That's wrong. Monoprix has indeed succeeded in its transformation by setting up in more wealthy areas (often under the "Monop'" name), but there is always a lot of stores, less trendy, in popular areas like Belleville and in small and modest provincial cities.
Prices are adjusted according to location.
I live in the 20eme right in front of one "Monop". I never go there since I usually find better selection and lower prices in Franprix but I wouldn't exactly call Monoprix "high end" or compare it to Whole Foods. Expensive, definitely.
Monoprix is in fact a regular small-scale supermarket for inner-city folks; its prices are higher than at huge "marts" such as Leclerc or Auchan, but are aligned with those of other shops in the same segment, like Franprix or Carrefour Market.
They print little puns on the packaging of their own products.
The bad accent of the man doing the narration is a little unnerving; they could have gone with a heavy French accent which could have been funny (maybe), or they could have hired a native speaker. But this sounds like they took the first guy in the hall who said he spoke English.
As well as the accent, the last title on the video also does that French thing where they get English tenses wrong. It's peculiarly French to say 'Since ten years we have the best prices', when you mean 'For the past ten years ...' - I'm not actually sure what the mistake being made here is, some literal translation maybe? But, it's usually a good indicator that the ESL speaker is French...
No it's not. Of course your mileage may vary in terms of income, but monoprix has gone regular to premium(ish) in the last 10 years.
If you have shopped elsewhere than Paris, you would agree on
Carrfour Market ~ Monoprix > franprix (who is going premiumish also) > 8a8 > g20 > lidl et al > alimentation general du coin
Historically I think so. Even the name hints at 'fair price', and the stores weren't fancy. At least a lot less than monoprix. Maybe they just changer strategy to avoid lowering standards.
He might have to wait in line though. Which really touches on what the Amazon service is good for. They should be focusing on putting their technology in gas stations and convenience stores, not supermarkets. It would be great to just go in and grab a few things and walk out. Where as in a Grocery store, the french version is much better.
There is often fast lines for clients with less than x products. They should generalize this system for carts and keep the lines for on-the-go clients.
It is more then just "Have french bakery". Culture is fitting because it is not just the bakery that makes the bread great. Farms, delivery, trade schools, customers all are required for french level of quality.
A comment I've heard that I suspect has at least some truth to it is that France has something of a monoculture around French food. That may well be overstating it. But I think it's fair to say that there is a highly optimized supply chain around delivering a specific cuisine and rather high consumer expectations around that cuisine.
When I go to a supermarket, I have to deal with finding the stuff I need, way too many people in the store, etc. but at least I can take my stuff home immediately.
When I buy online I have to wait for delivery, but at least I don't have to go looking for stuff in 20 different isles only to find out the thing I needed is in a completely illogical place, or deal with all the people there.
This concept combines all the disadvantages of physically going to a supermarket with all the disadvantages of buying online. Amazon's concept actually improves the physical buying experience.
Going to a (small) supermarket is not a disadvantage, I find it a nice experience, because you can see/smell/touch) the products you want. I wouldn't buy fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, cheese, etc. online.
Not being able to take your stuff home is a little annoying, but depending on where you live it can be almost necessary to have groceries delivered. In Paris many buildings don't have elevators at all, or very small ones that can hold at most two people and not many bags. If you live on the 5th floor you're happy to get someone bring the bags up the stairs for you.
For me, it really depends on how reliable the market is. If I know produce and fish are going to be reliably high quality and fresh, I'd be more inclined to use an online service. However, that's not really the case with the average supermarket and therefore I prefer shopping in person. (If it were available where I live, I'd probably use Instacart with Whole Foods from time to time, but I'm lukewarm on using Peapod which is available for me.)
Is going to the store such a big disadvantage? I work from home, I spend most of the time physically away from people. I do enjoy my shopping. You know, a little bit of interaction with people. I have tried online shopping with delivery when living in the UK. Very often, at the door, it turned out that X, Y and Z was not in stock and I had to go to another shop and find the missing bits myself. Waste of time...
That was pretty much what I found while I was using grocery delivery (Peapod) because I was on crutches. This was a while back and there are generally more options today (though not where I live fr the most part). I'd get substitutions I didn't care for and random common items I absolutely needed for a recipe would be out of stock.
I could imagine using a reliable service again but, so long as driving to the store and shopping is straightforward, ordering online for delivery isn't something I really need.
Depends how much time the physical delivery takes. From my experience Monoprix picks high-rise locations (not like WallMart). Most of its customers should be at walking distance.
I don't want to speculate but it would help if a french gentleman tells us his experience.
You're right, every city I used to live in France, I had at least 1 Monoprix within a short walk distance. Where I currently live, I can get to 3 different Monoprix in less than 10 minutes by walk.
Never seen a Monoprix outside of a city anyway:)
What Amazon ad didn't show is a huge cart full of items which will have to be unloaded into the car then again from the car to the house. That's not negligible when the weather is cold.
This is exactly how innovation is supposed to work - if a rival company (or a new entry to the market) comes up with a better solution then you have to innovate to survive. It's exactly why competition is important. It forces companies to improve what they offer. If they can do it in clever ways that don't cost much, that's even better. The business wins and the customer gets a better experience.
If Amazon has shocked the supermarket industry in to action then that's awesome.
But you are right, though - I'm working in this space and Amazon Go definitely helped to shake up some people. Let's see if we can turn this into action.
Amazon didn't really shock them into action as the service has been available for quite a few years. They are probably trying to show that Amazon shopping is not that disruptive.
I guess that was the Monoprix's point that have a system with no cashier for more than 10 year now. Or do you mean that the 10 years old system pushed Amazon to innovate by redoing it with an app ?
Did anyone else find the original Amazon Go video's mentioning "deep learning", "webscale technologies" and "generic buzzwords" funny, when in reality they probably use people behind security camera screens tallying up what you buy?
I imagine that edge cases will be flagged and checked by a human operator, a bit like postal services do with machine unreadable addresses. Deep learning isn't perfect - how would you suggest those cases are handled?
I wouldn't make any claims like Amazon did, unless it was an over 95% automated, with humans involved only in some case of dispute etc.
So, face recognition to track people + image recognition to track products (which is not that difficult, since it's a constrained data set e.g. 40.000 products to train, and they can also use information about position to narrow results -- eg. aisle B, so it's one of the soaps, etc).
"image recognition to track products (which is not that difficult, since it's a constrained data set e.g. 40.000 products to train, and they can also use information about position to narrow results -- eg. aisle B, so it's one of the soaps, etc)."
Wish it was that easy. People have a habit of picking stuff up and putting it in the wrong place. Staff at stores spend forever putting stuff back to it's correct place and binning stuff that should have been refrigerated but placed somewhere non-refrigerated.
"Well, the stuff will already have been identified in the picking stage."
Sure, but you take some semi-random object out of the basket and add it to the wrong shelf. Do that a few times and things are going to get much harder.
If we're honest, regardless there will be wrong classifications anyway - if it wasn't for laser scanners humans would make more mistakes as well and these are nowhere near human intelligence.
In India all local stores have this service, you fill up a basket leave it at counter with your address. They'll bill it and deliver at home and you'll pay in cash. Though no large chain I know does this.
As usual Amazon tries to take over an industry and makes no profit, which is their usual recipe. They have a P/E of 174 which means there is no chance they will ever make enough to be a real profitable enterprise. Outside of AWS I think everything else contributes no profits at all. But I do like the leave the cart idea although that only works if the prices supports the extra delivery.
Ahah, nice troll. But I still prefer to both those options the way I do it : I just shop on store's website and ask for delivery. This allows me to have shopping lists that I can use as templates, I can shop any hour of the day and take time to compare products.
Granted, this is especially a good fit for me because I work from home and can receive deliveries any time.
It's interesting that you see just about every permutation of shopping and delivery options out there.
You have online shopping and delivery as you mention. I'd do this more myself if there were a service I liked where I live.
One of the local chains around here started up a "To Go" service recently. You shop online and pick up. I assume the market here is people who can easily drive but may not be very mobile or have young kids that just make it a hassle to do the picking themselves. (My anecdotal observation is this service isn't being used much.)
And this case is pretty much what a lot of markets in cities have been doing forever. (Often smaller markets but I believe Whole Foods does this in some locations as well.)
The point of Amazon Go is instant gratification. The point of this is not carrying stuff to your house. Cool troll, but they should be careful of the false sense of superiority. Perhaps they could hire some Nokia and BlackBerry execs to explain the concept to them.
I wonder what the difference between the cost of Amazon's technology is vs Monoprix's service?
Monoprix may have found that they can make more money / save on initial outlay of shop fitting by offering a similar service, but without the technology.
I couldn't stand the feeling of anxiety that you have to be home an hour later and wait for someone to show up with your grocery. Not only that, but what if they miss or misplace something? Too many questions to write. Obviously not for me. But Amazon Go looks like something I could use.
On another topic, please don't be that site: 66 MB over 325 requests and 30s to load over a 50mbps connection. And that's after Origin blocked 166 more assets. You're ruining the internet for everyone.
Monoprix live in a nice niche of upper class consumers living in the center of rich towns. The produits are kind of expensive, but the service is neat.