Marty the Giant Grocery Story Robot Escapes (Way OT)

[bkeich]

Marty the robot escapes Pennsylvania grocery store

[bkeich]

As I walked through this very Giant yesterday I considered tackling this freaking thing as it got in my way 3 times. Sorry to say no one shot it in the parking lot.

Maybe next time I will help escort it outside and see if it will try and cross Rt. 412 on its own. There is actually a bison farm in the other side of the street, maybe the Bison can get destroy it.

Yea, it annoys me. A lot.

[phillychuck]

I thought it was cute the first five times I saw it. Now I have to restrain myself from trying to bump into it. It really does get in the way a LOT.

Now, the other thing that is really strange at the Hellertown Giant is the 2 FREE charging spots for electric cars. For the first six months they had them absolutely no one used them. Lately a few folks have, but how do they provide free electricity? Who is paying for that?

[bkeich]

Funny you ask PC, because we have 2 electric cars and it is sometimes me using it when you are there. We have my 2014 BMW I3 (silver / black) and my wife's 2022 Kia EV 6 (very red).

The power in the charger at the Giant is pretty low, but it is free to use, no app, no sign in, so it is just a nice perk for shopping there. It is about 6 KW I believe (240 V, 24 A), so honestly in an hour we get about $1 in power, but still, nice for topping off. The cost to the Giant is minimal. ($5-8 per day I would guess based on the usage I have seen, this of course does not include the depreciation and maintenance on the stations).

I do wish they had put them in the BACK, not the front because I have had people comment that the people with EV's get an advantage of prime parking, in fact as good or better than Handicap (and I agree), it was poorly thought out. Put them in the back so there is no anger. To be clear, those comments have been made other places, never in Hellertown, where honestly we seem to have a nice-to-each-other town.

That said, I have never had a problem at the Hellertown Giant, in fact most of the time people ask me about my EV thoughts and experience. I have never even seen anyone blocking the spot, or ICE'ing here, which frankly is a little surprising, especially since they gave it a primary spot.

[julio]

Had to laugh just a little bit at bkeich's post, because he cited depreciation and maintenance of the charging stations as a cost to Giant.

Maintenance. Absolutely, a cost.

But depreciation? The charging stations will age (as everything does), but I suspect that, like most such durable investments made by corporations, the actual depreciation will occur more slowly than the tax depreciation - meaning that Giant will be able to essentially write off the cost of the charging stations on taxes well before they actually have to replace them. The single assumption I'm making here is that they've done their homework, and that they expect to write them off more rapidly than they need to replace them. The tax depreciation may (or may not) be sufficient to offset their operational costs.

[zambonir]

I'm sure the EV stations are simply a matter of green company policy/a loss leader, and ultimately will be beneficial even if Hellertown customers aren't using as much as say, my local store in South Philly, as more people get EVs (especially in the next year or two). A lot of times the provider/partner is also subsidizing them in some way.

https://giantfood.com/pages/giant-food-partners-with-volta

I've always known there were a lot of LV people here but I didn't realize the closest supermarket to my parent's house was a fulcrum!

[bkeich]

Very true Julio. It is a small cost and maybe even a positive, especially if they can get people to use their store instead of others. I live up the street, so the charging station actually doesn't add a customer in my case, but it doesn't take much in today's grocery structure to make it a positive. It is easy to spend $100-200 dollars (with something like 20-30% profit??) in a grocery store (or more), so things like points that you can turn into discount gas, or free EV charging is pretty easy to recoup.

[phillychuck]

Actually, grocery store markups are really pretty low, they average around 1-2%. They make their money turning the inventory over again and again.

There was a non-EV vehicle parked at the North Volta charger this morning during the pre-superbowl rush at the store. South one was open, though.

I probably spend 15 minutes at most when I shop. I gather I wouldn't get much juice into my future EV car in that time period...