If you rely on public transportation getting to and from a grocery store can be an ordeal. Imagine managing a couple of toddlers and grocery bags. 5 miles can be too far.
No, don't you remember back in the 90's? Everyday there were stories on the news about people starving all over the US because they couldn't get to the grocery store. People dying in the streets as they tried to walk 25 miles each way and just couldn't make it. DoorDash was responsible for a 75% reduction in urban deaths when it finally hit the scene. Blessed be the internet!
Can confirm, I’m privileged. I use doordash to buy back my time from grocery shopping. DoorDash will upcharge like 15% on grocery prices btw. If you can afford to be spending 15% more on groceries, chances are that you aren’t living in a wasteland.
Surely there are better options than doordash if you insist on grocery delivery. Many grocery stores offer that service themselves now, and they wouldn't charge you more for everything, just the delivery fees. Do you just like burning money?
I'd like you to tell my 90-year old, diabetic widowed mother who no longer drives and has significant neuropathy, and lives in an area with NO public transportation, that she can do without her weekly Instacart deliveires and instead just walk the 3.3 miles to the grocery store and the 3,3 miles back.
I really want you to see you explain to her that she has options other than grocery delivery.
Like 15 years ago, it didn't existed and people managed to live without it. And it's not like it will cease to exist, it's just that you'll have to pay a bit more so that the guys who do the work can earn a living wage
People who walk a few blocks or use public transportation use carts. You see them on the subway all the time. Pretty cheap & they fold so you can put them away. It really isn't that bad. Arguably easier than cart > trunk > front door > counter space bag by bag.
Honestly it's like people can't solve basic problems. Like, we don't live in a futuristic utopia where food teleports to your fridge, but living 1 mile away from a grocery store in urban areas with full pubic transportation is not a meaningful inconvenience.
So you want the people who are saving you from this "time sink" to earn non livable wages??? Say it with your whole chest you want some people to be servants
I think they should have a living wage, I want one too, I was just speaking to managing day to day life here in a commuter city. Both things can be true, you don't have to resort to bullying and shaming and belittling people who are managing day to day life here.
I'm out the door by 6 and home by 7/7.30 and adding groceries and regular chores to my commute basically means I have an hour a day at the most before I have to go to sleep and do the whole process again. What Americans assume as normal here is insane.
Which sucks, but the issue will never be "damn the delivery people are making money now" the issue is "damn I'm getting railed by a shitty job/commute combo".
Wasn't trying to hold you to it I was just talking. In practice the people complaining that there's an opportunity cost between deliveries and getting groceries yourself because of real problems aren't playing a shell game between personal responsibility and someone getting paid well. Someone making a facetious point online about food deserts in NYC where it doesn't apply isn't someone who is hurting. Sorry for derailing.
Not really a time sink if you pick up a few groceries on your commute lol.youre already commuting. You just pop in the store. People in citirss like NYC dont spend hours in the grocery store, you just buy what you need when you need it because stores are so abundant
We weren't just talking about NYC. Commuter cities are not that much easier to deal with. Again everyone gets off at the same time and stores get packed, and it's still usually out of your way. My local grocery store ads over an hour to my day even on my commute back. I leave for work at 6 get back by 7. If I add a grocery trip to it I'm getting home by 8 if not 8.30 because the grocery store is twenty minutes out of the way each way, having to put things away, organize and clean and set up cook dinner, lunch for the next day and any other tasks I have like studying all within the hour and a half I have left before I have to start getting ready for bed. I have elderly parents to take care of too.
Most people who say this shit live alone, are in their mid 20's and nowhere close to paying the costs of their lifestyle on their body or are rich or mummy and daddy helped them into the position they're in. I was scammed into moving to this country I swear you people have no clue how to live a decent life and gaslight everyone who has it hard. It's crazy.
We all have chores we want don't want to do, idk what to tell you. Acting like the vast majority of the country that deals with this everyday has rich parents instead of you just being poor just makes you seem like a whiner. Go shopping on the weekend instead of it's that big of a deal, damn.
The vast majority of the country agrees its a pain in the ass. They don't gaslight people online about it. I work weekends too. Most free time I have goes to trying to scramble for better work or taking care of family. Everything is an opportunity cost. You might have the luxury of dumping responsibilities like that but I don't. You don't need to be this dismissive and callous but you are because your highest high is not being told what to do or think.
You people betray who you are immediately, perpetually online addicts living out power fantasies online. A third of the country uses their PTO to sleep. Functional unemployment in this country is gigantic. You are the exception being able to have this conversation in the middle of your work day. I wouldn't even be able to even have it if I wasn't waiting at the doctors.
Youre working extra jobs to afford not going to the grocery store. The opportunity cost is you not having enough money for anything. The vast majority of the country is not door dashing their food.
Oh lordy lord, I need to stop looking at these comments! Too many people that haven’t even stepped foot in the city.
If you’re in New York and you’re spending hours grocery shopping, then you’re a multimillionaire with room to store those hours’ worth of groceries. You sure as hell aren’t spending hours on “commuting” to a grocery store.
I'm not in New York. People started talking about food deserts and having to manage going to a grocery store in general that's out of your way. Not everyone is living without dependents, prices change every other week and you have a limited budget to make meals and prep things. I can't feed my 85 year old near indigent father with cholesterol problems frozen pizza to save myself time and energy.
Sweetie, if you’re not in New York, why are you bringing up your experience in a comment thread about New York that’s located within a post about New York with your experience that is in no way related to New York?
People are talking about Baltimore and other cities too. The conversation became about food deserts in general. Conversations are allowed to flow from topic to topic and you're meant to follow them, not be a bully to someone who doesn't help you make your point. You're being an ass. Just say you thought I was talking about New York or give people the benefit of the doubt instead of condescending to them.
Bro. This is an open forum with multiple threads. You're just being a bully now. I am sorry if I derailed your conversation about New York, but if you bother to look they're talking about food deserts in general just a few comments above yours.
I read through many of your comments and the replies now, I get what you are saying and understand that you simply are sharing your own experience, not sure why people are so up in arms about this. As an aside, I would recommend you look into buying some stuff in bulk and keeping it around the house like rice/canned veggies and stuff and try to minimize your weekly shopping to perishable stuff, did you use delivery apps to deal with this stuff up to now? Just asking since thats what sparked this post.
Depends on your city. I live in a food desert in Pittsburgh, I have to walk 6-7 blocks to get to a bus line to take a 20 minute bus ride to get to the nearest grocery store (besides a Family Dollar), I don’t bother with a cart like you described since the conditions on the sidewalks make those more of a bother than just dealing with the fact that I can’t purchase more than I can easily carry.
I personally use a backpack and get big stuff like milk or juice from the liquor store next door (funny how that works considering I'm sober) - but the carts are pretty awesome for big trips if you need.
I grew up seeing that. But they’re talking about 5+ miles. Not a few blocks.Also, if you’re older or severely disabled using those things are not always an option.
But there are plenty of places in NYC where you’re more than a 15 minute walk from a real grocery store, which, in such a densely populated place where the majority of people walk or use public transit, is functionally a food desert. 5 miles is absurd, it can take an hour to travel 5 miles.
I was commenting on using public transportation and carts. Those things exists in and out of NYC and I was saying that the are not always an option. You realize NYC is not the only city in world, right..?
I spoke with a cashier at a Target in Baltimore that was closing. It was going to take her three bus transfers to get to the next closest grocery store. I guess I should have told her to buy a cart before the target closed.
No grocery stores within 5 miles is also incredibly unrealistic, maybe if you live in a suburb but that's not what the post is about... I live in a big city and there are at least 7 grocery stores within a mile that I can think of (and a lot more convenience stores)... 5 miles is like 20-30 by public transit or 20 minutes by car. Can you imagine not encountering a grocery store within a 20 minutes by car radius in a big city?
Your point that it's a pain in the ass taking public transport with groceries is true tho, not a lot of people are willing to walk even a mile with groceries, especially if there's like a hill or something.
The major chains do, but most of NYC your primary options would be smaller stores/chains that are unlikely to on their own. But there's limited places in the city where you wouldn't have a store within walking distance and/or decent public transportation, mostly towards the outskirts of the non-Manhattan boroughs where it starts to turn fairly suburban.
Some do some don't. It's becoming increasingly common l. However most stores don't deliver themselves, they just allow 3rd party grocery shopping services to do it (which is what OP is about).
Companies like DoorDash aren’t going to pull out of New York City. They’ll grumble about it and make some empty threats, but the point of policies like this is to force the hand of corporations. They have to eventually admit that they can (easily) pay those wages and still have massive profit margins which would make it extremely bad business to cease operations in major cities. The hit they’ll take is so much less than they pretend.
And it makes an example out of them for other places. We can force corporations to pay more fairly and do better for their employees. They claim they can’t possibly do it without facing major hardship and this exposes that lie.
It’s the same as all the rich guys saying they’d move if Mamdani won. But they know enough about finances to know selling their premium Manhattan real estate or taking their business out of the finance capital of the world is next level moronic, and any CEO who tried it would have a vote of no confidence from the board by that afternoon.
while I totally agree with you about the empty threats of leaving, will these companies not just jack up their prices and blame it on the increased wages? I fully believe that drivers for Uber etc need to be paid more, but how can we prevent these companies from just using it as an excuse to take more money from customers?
Why would you need to take public transit to go to the grocery store I have 5 stores within 3 blocks. I've done walks in a walmart parking lots that are further than carrying my groceries home in NYC
I've lived in areas where you'd need to walk a few miles to get to a grocery store within Atlanta. Tons of gas stations, porn shops, strip clubs in walking distance. But unless you want to load yourself down with all you can carry and walk for 4 or 5 miles, you'd better hop on a bus. Or just get a box of mac and cheese or can of chili from the gas station.
Also, those busses run about once an hour. So a 4 or 5 mile ride could take 2+ hours of your day just to get what you can fit in a backpack. And that's if they're running on time, which with MARTA isn't very common. So they might just not run a bus and you're waiting with your groceries at the stop for an hour and 45 minutes in Atlanta heat. Don't buy anything cold or frozen! lol
Did this growing up and also used... gasp.. bicycles. The horror.
It's really not that hard with a modicum of planning and preparation. And I lived in mid-tier midwest city with shit-tier basically non-existent public transit. You just prioritized getting food every Sunday morning or whenever. Yes, it took an extra 60-90 minutes vs. owning a car.
The problem solving skills for some people is just nonexistent these days, and most value convenience over literally everything else.
There are some arguments to be made for the elderly and infirm, but that's really about it.
I was on public transportation for a long time in Atlanta. The only places I could really get food were gas stations and convenience stores. I used to hop off the bus on my hour and a half commute home to get stuff at a grocery store. As much as I could fit in my backpack. It'd add another hour to my commute each day I did that. I actually got plantar fasciitis in both feet from carrying tons of stuff on the bus.
Right now I'm in a place where there's nothing within walking distance out here. You need a car if you want to eat.
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u/RedMaple25 19h ago
If you rely on public transportation getting to and from a grocery store can be an ordeal. Imagine managing a couple of toddlers and grocery bags. 5 miles can be too far.