The three year old who’s never seen a grocery store

“What’s that?” my 3 year old daughter asked, pointing to the conveyer belt on the checkout till at the Carriefour supermarket in downtown Tours in France where we were on a holiday last week. Who hasn’t seen a conveyer belt checkout till at the age of three (almost four)? The child of an internet shopper, that’s who.
As an AirBnb tourist the biggest difference to our London lifestyle, apart from drinking white wine every day at lunchtime (which we did in France, not London!), was how many shopping bags we had to carry to our flat in France. Both groceries and other goods. Okay, groceries and toys. And while I was lugging bags filled with milk, wine and cheese back to our rented house in Tours I thought of London, where we buy almost everything online; groceries, furniture, electronics … and yes, toys. Carrying groceries is a thing of the past for us. And we are not alone.
According to the Office for National Statistics, ca 15% of all retail sales are online in the UK. And I’d venture a guess that in London the proportion is even higher.
When it comes to food though, I was slightly surprised by the fact that only ~5% of the groceries market was covered by online sales. There seems to be so much potential for growth there it’s almost ridiculous. E-commerce has come a long way, but it still has far to go in transforming our lives. Until then, my kids will be in the minority where “Ocado” is another word for food. And toys.

