The Bizarre World Of Online Grocery Substitutions

Between supply chain shortages, evolving algorithmic intelligence and Instacart shoppers under high pressure, consumers of online grocery ordering are finding substitutions for out of stock items to be creative, if not occasionally delusional. JL 

Jem Bartholomew reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Global supply chains are in turmoil and supermarket shelves are sparse. So order packers are winging it. Roses swapped for bell pepper. A thermometer switched for mac and cheese. A rapid Covid test traded for Halls lozenges. Each company handles swaps differently. Some such as Walmart use an algorithm to help aid substitutions while others, including Whole Foods, have workers make suggestions themselves. “A substitution algorithm recommends the next best item based on the customer’s shopping history.”

Ajanay Barnes and her roommate, craving ice cream on a recent night, used the grocery-shopping app Instacart to load up a basket at Walmart.

They asked for strawberry shortcake ice cream. They received sausage, egg and cheese breakfast rolls. After delivery, Instacart issued a refund. The breakfast rolls are uneaten in Ms. Barnes’s freezer.

Not cauliflower.

“I was craving this one specific ice cream,” said Ms. Barnes, of Victorville, Calif. “I guess Walmart had other plans.”

Global supply chains are in turmoil and supermarket shelves are looking sparse. So order packers are winging it. Roses swapped for bell pepper. A thermometer switched for mac and cheese. A rapid Covid test traded for Halls lozenges.

An Instacart spokeswoman said high demand and supply-chain issues have troubled many of its grocery partners. Instacart gives replacement recommendations, the spokeswoman said. Delivery couriers often communicate with customers from the store to check substitutions.

Online shoppers have been left amused, puzzled and annoyed. “As there’s been different supply-chain issues and shortages, you notice some weird, weird substitutions,” said Rhett Mitter, who works in real estate in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Mitter, 37, said he needed horseradish to make a sauce for shrimp with his wife, Jenna. Despite ordering it from Whole Foods, the product wasn’t available. The substitute delivered? Beets. “We joked about it,” Mr. Mitter said. “You can’t make cocktail sauce with Ketchup and beets.”

Each company handles swaps differently. Some such as Walmart use an algorithm to help aid substitutions while others, including Whole Foods, have workers make suggestions themselves.

An Amazon. com Inc. spokeswoman pointed to its substitution policy covering Whole Foods Market deliveries. The policy states that its shoppers will suggest a similar item or substitute it with an available one. Amazon grocery customers can set preferences to avoid all substitutions if desired. The spokeswoman declined to comment further.

Brad Wyland, a 50-year-old working in marketing strategy and business development in Pittsburgh, ordered cauliflower on a Whole Foods order. He had planned to roast it but the store was out and asked him if he’d like to switch it out for fresh raspberries. He said he missed that message while at work. When the raspberries got to his door, he turned them away.

“The belief that somebody somewhere actually could think that raspberries were a great substitute for cauliflower—it’s definitely like a ‘Seinfeld’ episode,” Mr. Wyland said.

Brad Wyland’s cauliflower — switched for raspberries.

PHOTO: BRAD WYLAND

Annette Wilson, 34, could picture the Christmas decorations she wanted adorned on her mock-fir tree: silver, red and gold baubles, twinkling white lights, a silver star crowning its white-frosted branches. But when Ms. Wilson ordered her items online for curbside pickup at a Walmart in Clearwater, Fla., what she got was totally different. Instead of 50 baubles, Walmart substituted two packs of little brown pine cones.

“What are those?” one of her children asked. “Where are the ornaments?”

Walmart offered Ms. Wilson a refund and let her keep the cones. They become extra decorations for her tree.

A Walmart spokeswoman said the company built “a substitution algorithm that recommends the next best item based on the customer’s shopping history” to aid substitutions, adding that the customer acceptance rate is over 95%. Customers can accept or reject a replacement. The Walmart spokeswoman didn’t comment on what causes mistakes, or whether there are more substitutions because of supply-chain issues. But the spokeswoman said customer responses teach the algorithm to be more accurate in the future.

Nick Pepper, a 49-year-old researcher at Northumbria University in the U.K., started ordering groceries online during the pandemic.

Mr. Pepper ordered a garden fork from the British supermarket Tesco to dig up earth ahead of some summer planting: carrots, radishes, an herb garden. He was amused by the small table forks he got instead.

“They’re slightly bendy,” said Mr. Pepper, who got a refund. A Tesco spokesman said product swaps are designed to provide something equal to—or better than—the original. Tesco declined to answer questions about specific incidents.

Some swaps can be amusing.

PHOTO: FAYE ROYAL

Faye Royal, a 39-year-old human resources worker in Caerphilly, U.K., received from Tesco an £11 (about $15) bottle of Sauvignon Blanc instead of the out-of-stock, roughly $1 bottle of a juice-based drink she ordered—for her two young daughters. Ms. Royal didn’t check her messages beforehand, only realizing the swap after it arrived.

Ms. Royal liked to imagine the shopper’s possible train of thought. “Someone went: ‘Do you know what? They’ve obviously got kids, we’re in a pandemic—let’s give them a bottle of wine!’ ”

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