10 ms·
Show HN: Get notified when grocery pickup slots are available
- thecodemonkey 6y agoHi HN! We realized that curbside pickups is a great compromise for everybody's health and safety right now. We built Curb Run because we found it very difficult to get a curbside pickup slot at our local Wegmans. Willing to drive a bit further away to another location, I hacked together a little script that would check for pickup slots across multiple stores in a radius. Fast forward, friends and family started hearing about this and asked if we could help them too. We ended up turning this into a web app for everybody to use -- and with many more stores and chains across the US. We hope that this can help you as well!
- ShakataGaNai 6y agoHow do you assure that this tool isn't used by the lazy techno-elite to snatch up all the delivery slots? Rather than say the older and technically less literate, whom are probably more at risk and more in need of those delivery slots? Yes, I totally get the concept and could use it myself. But I'm also reasonably young and healthy and would rather shop at the store and let the "at risk" population use these grocery store features to be safe.
- brokenmachine 6y agoYou're welcome to not use it. The whole reason this exists is because "these grocery store features" don't exist. Sites should be implementing their own waiting list, but that hasn't happened, so here we are.
- mjwhansen 6y agoClarification: this app is only for curbside slots, not delivery.
- gullyfur 6y agoHey, this is cool! I tried to setup a curbside pickup for my elderly parents with a local store through instacart, but after getting to the end I discovered it was for next week. Couple thoughts: 1. Could I just provide a zipcode instead of sharing my browser location? 2. Could I check stores in aggregate? I'd rather discover which local business has the MOST openings and then register an account there, rather than getting to the end of the shopping experience and waiting. Lastly, you have a typo "seend" in your third step.
- thecodemonkey 6y agoThanks a ton for the feedback! Hope this could be helpful for your parents. 1. We decided to use geolocation because it removes one more form field. It also makes it easier to expand to additional countries (https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside/issues https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside/issues) we may reconsider in the future. 2. Happy to explore adding additional ways to tackle the problem. For now, we just have a simple map of stores to visualize coverage: https://curb.run/stores https://curb.run/stores Fixed the typo. Thanks!
- lonelappde 6y agoYou can let the user input their coordinates or use a map picker.
- handedness 6y agoPlease reconsider #1.
- thomas 6y agoAgreed. Not opening up location.
- htunnicliff 6y agoSuch a great idea! Do you have any plans on open-sourcing this?
- thecodemonkey 6y agoYes indeed! Feel free to check it out here https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/curbside
- seltzered_ 6y agoHave you stopped to think about the ethical implications of this? Could you put a warning to be mindful and only consider the service if you're high-risk or in a situation where curbside is the only safe option? I love the fact that my high-risk parents are using curbside pickup, but I find myself better fitted to wear a mask and do the groceries myself during off-peak hours. The last thing I think the world wants is (presumably younger) people in tech taking up curbside slots before other people in the community.
- thecodemonkey 6y agoHi there! Absolutely. This is why we are explicitly focusing on curbside pickup rather than delivery. It is not about snatching slots as soon as they become available, but more about being able to check across dozens of stores at the same time. We've found that there are actually plenty of pickup timeslots available -- if you just look a bit outside super-urban areas. Call it human-loadbalancing-as-a-service if you will.
- seltzered_ 6y agoThanks for clarifying. > "It is not about snatching slots as soon as they become available" Perhaps consider rewording your post title? It's currently: "Show HN: Get notified when grocery pickup slots are available" The idea of encouraging people to look for other stores seems to be something grocery stores are doing, I just noticed the Kroger-based chain's website I use (QFC) shows me a list of other locations with pickup availability.
- perl4ever 6y agoIt may be more optimal in some sense, but it's reminiscent of how Google Maps sends people through residential neighborhoods during rush hour. Which you may have heard people get unhappy about. If it works as intended, assuming the demand continues to exceed the overall capacity, it's just going to spread out the overload more. If you have 200% demand then working on getting from 90% to 99% utilization is missing the forest for the trees.
- dubcanada 6y ago
- c0nducktr 6y agoThis is really great! I've sent it to a couple of my friends who are immunocompromised and have been having trouble getting slots. Thank you for making this!
- thecodemonkey 6y agoAwesome! That’s great to hear. Hope this can help them out.
- freepor 6y agoWhat I’ve found with Whole Foods delivery is that if you wait for a notification you’ve lost the slot. I use a bot that plays a loud sound when a slot is available and foregrounds the Firefox window. I then have to click the checkout flow immediately. If I’m even a foot away from my machine when it happens I lose the slot. I only get deliveries when I’m active on my PC.
- robenkleene 6y agoI'd love to hear the details of how you set this up with Firefox? How does the bot work? (Also is there even a way to setup a notification when Whole Foods delivery slots are available?)
- theIV 6y agoI have not used it (and I'm not sure if this is what freepor was referring to) but a co-worker sent me this: https://github.com/pcomputo/Whole-Foods-Delivery-Slot https://github.com/pcomputo/Whole-Foods-Delivery-Slot
- freepor 6y agoIt's nothing too complicated but not going into details since half the people reading this are in San Francisco competing with me for delivery slots.
- baddox 6y agoAre you using Amazon Prime Now for Whole Foods delivery? In SF I wasn't able to get a delivery window for several days (admittedly I wasn't checking more than a couple of times per day), but on night on a whim I decided to check right after midnight and was able to schedule a delivery for 2 days in the future. Obviously a tiny sample size, but it appears they only ever schedule for 2 days in advance, and they must open up new windows at midnight (and perhaps at other scheduled times throughout the day). Several days before that, I had a very annoying problem, which was that I checked the Prime Now app and saw that there were delivery windows, so I added all the items I wanted, and then there were no longer any windows. Also, every time you refresh, it apparently just silently removes from your cart any items which are no longer in stock, which means you better keep your shopping list written down somewhere if you don't have it down by heart!
- kylecordes 6y agoThe fundamental problem here is grocery stores and others needlessly limiting when they make pickups available. Lots of people are sitting at home with extreme schedule flexibility, and would be happy to choose a slot 10 days out or whatever. Instead there is the silliness (and third-party app workarounds like this) of only releasing slots much closer. In other conversation I have seen the following explanation: those systems were designed for a much different supply demand balance than we see today, they just haven't had time to adjust things yet.
- protonimitate 6y ago> those systems were designed for a much different supply demand balance than we see today, they just haven't had time to adjust things yet. I feel like as much as this app is well intentioned, it will only make this problem worse. The bottle neck isn't on the technology side. It's on the operations side. Extending the order window ahead would work, but they'd have to do a "check in" before hand to actually pick your order, otherwise you wouldn't be able to know if things will be in stock 10 days ahead of time.
- nogabebop23 6y agoYes - I bought a microphone that was in-stock for pick-up and a week later sent a "hey, what's up?" email and got a "order ready for pickup" email an hour later. There was no one in the store but they had 10x the number of pickup orders to process. Its a operational capacity problem, not a scheduling one.
- bdcravens 6y agoHEB used to let you schedule out further in the future, but it looks like they've now reduced that to 7 days.
- CamperBob2 6y agoWhat I've found annoying with Amazon Fresh in particular is that they don't tell you there are no slots available until after you spend half an hour fighting with their search engine and populating the cart. And then, as you point out, they only show a few slots in the immediate future with large Xs across them. Yeah, thanks, guys, that's really helpful. You've been screwing around with grocery delivery for what, 15+ years now, and still can't make it work?
- smoyer 6y agoI appreciate this effort ... when we thought things were going to get bad in late February, we put about 3 months of food in our larder (like a root cellar but reachable from the basement of our house). We've been ordering about every 2 weeks just to keep it replenished just in case things get significantly worse. I've got three at risk people in my house so we can't really afford for any of (the five of) us to catch this.
- bdcravens 6y agoWe did the same, but only about a month of food, and I ordered TP on Amazon when I started seeing shortages in other countries. (I have a respiratory condition)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jhwhite 6y agoI opened a few issues on GitHub. Once I sign up, how do I stop notifications? How do I add stores to my sub?
- mjwhansen 6y agoYou can stop notifications by replying DONE to the text message. You can add stores by going to the website again and selecting different stores. It resets for each monitor.
- floatingatoll 6y agoHas anyone started scalping pickup slots yet? “If you want toilet paper, you’ll have to buy our pickup slot for $50”.
- bdcravens 6y agoOur grocer (HEB in Texas) requires you to have paid for your order to book the slot. My wife went to the store 2 days ago and was able to buy TP without any issues, but until recently, even a pickup slot wouldn't guarantee you any of the products you reserved.
- adrianmonk 6y agoHopefully price-gouging laws would apply.
- josefresco 6y agoRequest: Peapod support.
- mjwhansen 6y agoIt's next on the list!
- gorgoiler 6y agoThis looks like a neat bit of tech but it doesn’t sit quite right with me. In particular it doesn’t feel very fair to our fellow shoppers. We wait in line for the ATM or the checkout or anything else because a scrabble is unfair. Using a tool like this when others almost certainly are not doesn’t really feel fair on those other people. Having to check manually for a slot sucks, but so does waiting in line, and that’s the lowest common denominator of behavior that still counts as fair which we can all adhere to right now. I get that the grocery companies should make the slot selection better. But laying the blame on them feels a bit like the FAQ for those padlocks that stop the airline passenger in front of you from being able to recline, where the manufacturer tried to claim we are all in this together their product is just part of a campaign for better airline seating for us all. It was no such thing: it was kind of selfish. In any other climate I’d happily be told to quit my social justice moralism, but things seem quite serious at the moment, and I wouldn’t encourage using this tool, but maybe I’m taking it too far.
- freepor 6y agoThe rich are hiring serfs to do their shopping and not needing online delivery. Coders like me are writing our own bots to get deliveries. The tall are reaching items on high shelves that others can't. Life isn't fair and you should expect people to avail themselves of any tools to help themselves that are not wantonly destructive to the society at large.
- gorgoiler 6y agoIt sounds like your life might be harder than most right now. I hope you’re safe and getting what you need.
- mlyle 6y agoThat has literally nothing to do with what he said. Asking people to forego whatever small advantages they have-- because others don't-- is foolish, IMO.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LatteLazy 6y agoPlease please please make this work for the UK!
- clairity 6y agoa number of commenters are relying on a misperception that we all need to avoid everyone else as much as possible. that's incorrect, and leads to this rush to overload curbside pickup options and crowd out people who particularly need to avoid the risk of infection: those with co-morbidities. what most of us need to do is avoid coughing and breathing into each others' noses/mouths, and that's what the (better) guidelines are meant to prevent. keeping distance doesn't need to be perfect, but best effort, as long as we generally avoid standing face-to-face and talking (especially for prolonged periods, closely, and/or loudly). it's really fine to go to the grocery store if you don't live with someone sick or immuno-compromised and can mostly avoid other people's spit in your face.
- allanitis 6y agoI got all excited when I saw the landing page graphic has groceries from an Australian grocery store: Woolworths. Alas...
- mjwhansen 6y agosorry :( does Woolworth's have curbside? Maybe we could add it! edit: just checked and they're only doing it for people who are confirmed as high risk (which is good!) Are there any grocery stores in AU that are doing pickup open to the general public?
- lend000 6y agoAfter 5 days in a row of not being able to get a delivery slot for another grocer, I used a similar tool. Even with the help of the tool polling the website every minute, the slot filled before I was able to complete the order the first few times. So at this point, it's clear that only coders are able to get online grocery delivery from the store I use. If there was a way to reserve delivery slots for the elderly and at-risk, that would be great, but otherwise I see no problem with technically savvy people having an advantage here, if the alternative is requiring people to do manual polling and waste time. Those slots are going to go to somebody. Perhaps some limit to one delivery per week per account to encourage people to order more efficiently. Eventually, delivery capacity will ramp up to satisfy demand regardless.
- gamblor956 6y agoSome grocery stores have implemented anti bot mechanisms as a result of earlier articles in the news about people using bots to claim delivery slots. In a nutshell, more than x number of requests over an unknown period and you get flagged (wherever you are using a bot or just an over eager human).
- andybak 6y agoUS only
- wasnthere 6y agoAsks browser for location permission without an option for entering a zip code or street address #FAIL
- gamblor956 6y agoThis is so unethical. I'm reaching out to the IT departments of some of these stores to ask them to block your IP address.
- Fnoord 6y agoIs this US-specific or does it also work in other countries? I scanned the landing page, could not find an answer to this question.