At this year’s Beverage Forum gathering of the “Who’s Who” of beverages, there was a panel of futurists who predicted how we will shop for groceries. In our State of the Beverage editorial, we reported on a few of these new shopping trends, including favorite lists on our phones used to reorder groceries online. For delivery, there will be multiple options, including a pickup location with valet service to load the groceries into your car, or a drone arriving at your doorstep, or a driverless delivery truck.
Wait a minute … there is even more sophistication a coming. Walmart’s patent application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was recently published (May 4, 2017). New technology will detect the milk carton sitting on the shelf inside your refrigerator will report back to Walmart that it is near empty and the next carton will automatically be reordered. The Technology even will figure the frequency of product usage, such as calculating the amount of wear on the tread of your tennis shoes and sending notifications to you that it is time to replace them.
What do you think? Is it good that our groceries will do the reordering, or should the consumer still have to push the button to reorder?