Ideally, the grocery stores or Instacart will add this functionality so it's baked in to the pickup experience. I honestly wouldn't mind if they did that and effectively forced us to shut down the app. This is a feature they should already have! And there are a lot of examples of people making something that's effectively a feature for an existing product, and that existing product building it.
The selfish route would have been to keep this to ourselves. We talked through the ethical implications of this and decided it was better to make it easier for everyone rather than just us. If everyone uses it and is able to grocery shop less often because they feel less food stress, things are improved.
We also purposefully don't support delivery slot since we think those should be only for people who can't drive or don't have a car, and delivery is more risky health-wise for delivery workers (who may have to visit 10+ different stores in a day).
There are definitely equity issues though. We've considered adding a prompt for people to donate to World Central Kitchen while waiting for a slot, for example.
> If everyone uses it and is able to grocery shop less often because they feel less food stress, things are improved.
But that is exactly the issue that gorgoiler points out with the queue example. Everybody won't use your website. Even if you are wildly successful, a huge fraction of people won't use it. Therefore it is unfair. It is like a digital line-cutting tool. The unfairness is the ethical problem.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. It’s clearer you’ve thought about these issues. The nudge towards an associated charity seems like a really good idea.
" delivery is more risky health-wise for delivery workers (who may have to visit 10+ different stores in a day)."
I've been researching this as part of a brainstorming effort on things like non-profit alternatives to pickup and delivery to get more folks out of stores. I also regularly talk to employees of any place I go to about behind-the-scenes stuff to understand it. Based on how each operates, the pickup people seem to be most at risk because they're:
(a) told where to be by their handhelds at any moment even if people are crowding around that area or them (sadly common)
(b) store the stuff in tight to medium spaces full of other people with similar level of exposure
(c) forced to be at a desk, use phones, or computers that all kinds of people are touching
(d) talk to more people face to face on deliveries if they're a delivery person
Way, way more risky to work pickup if any of the above applies. It might also be more risky to order through pickup if they're not doing lots of sanitation. If you're wondering about that, all you have to do is ask anyone who has worked retail how minimum wage or barely-above people follow the rules if every day is a shit day. Hint: many will care less than the customers they're serving.
All that is just for risk assessment. Far as your app, I have mixed feelings on it like the parent. What I like is that you all put time into doing something to help people do something that might reduce the spread of the virus. So, thanks for doing that. :)
Heck, I had thought about doing the same thing with it just being selectively given to immuno-compromised, older, and/or nice folks. I also have been thinking someone could do some of these online shopping ideas for more well-off folks with differentiators with that money covering cost of both physical space and IT to support more orders from the other people. Kind of like freemium.
The selfish route would have been to keep this to ourselves. We talked through the ethical implications of this and decided it was better to make it easier for everyone rather than just us. If everyone uses it and is able to grocery shop less often because they feel less food stress, things are improved.
We also purposefully don't support delivery slot since we think those should be only for people who can't drive or don't have a car, and delivery is more risky health-wise for delivery workers (who may have to visit 10+ different stores in a day).
There are definitely equity issues though. We've considered adding a prompt for people to donate to World Central Kitchen while waiting for a slot, for example.