by John Burgess
Tuesday, February 1, 1994
You won't be able to squeeze the grapefruit, but starting this spring you'll be able to order it over a computer network.
The Vienna-based America Online computer service said yesterday that its customers will be able to use their computers to order grapefruit and any other grocery and pharmacy items from Safeway stores. Clerks will gather up the items, then give them to Shoppers Express, a Bethesda-based transport company, for delivery to homes the old-fashioned way.
The goods will be billed to the customer's credit cards at the same prices as in the stores. But people shopping electronically will pay a $9.95 delivery fee for groceries and a $2 fee for pharmaceuticals.
A grocery shopping service that the Prodigy on-line network launched in the 1980s failed to attract enough shoppers and was canceled. But America Online contends that its service will be sufficiently easy to use and have a large enough customer base to make it fly.
The company has 600,000 subscribers nationwide and will provide the service in many areas served by Safeway and other retailers, such as Kroger Co., Winn Dixie Stores, Albertson's Inc., Hook-SuperRx Inc. and Eckerd Drug Co..
To succeed on a mass scale, it will have to overcome some venerable customs of grocery shopping -- among them, handling the produce.. Noted Gene DeRose, vice president of Jupiter Communications Co., a New York firm that researches new media: "Do I want a clerk in a grocery store picking out my steaks and my bananas?"
Home shopping is one key to the long-term economic viability of the information highway, a coast-to-coast grid of data links that is being built to carry all forms of electronic information: movies, video conferencing, phone calls, books.
Via phone, home shopping has blossomed into a multibillion-dollar business. But many consumers have resisted purchases by computer, missing the contact with an operator and feeling uncomfortable with the technology. "It's the same old problem -- people can't program the VCR," said Jerry Lucas, president of Telestrategies Inc., a McLean consulting firm.
In partnership with Shoppers Express, Safeway began home delivery programs in 1992. Consumers can place orders by phone, fax or special "ScanFone" devices, in which they run a bar code reader over items in a Safeway catalog to make their picks..
America Online would create another order channel, the online service, in which subscribers link their machines by phone to databases. America Online offers electronic mail, stock quotes, educational material, reference works, games and computer software.
While the homebound have welcomed grocery delivery services, it remains unclear how well they are attracting customers who have no problem getting to the store. Neither Safeway nor Shoppers Express releases statistics on their current service.
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