Grocery Shoppers Mourn End Of Week-Long App Outage That Forced Them To Simply Walk Into The Store

QUINCY, Mass.—Grocery shoppers across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic expressed a quiet sense of loss this week after the websites and apps for several major chains came back online, ending a roughly week-long outage that had forced them to walk into a building, pick up food and give it to another human being for money.

“For seven days, I just went to the store,” said Gerald Pomeroy, 67, of Quincy, describing the period with the reverence of a man recalling a pilgrimage. “I saw an aisle. I saw the whole aisle. Did you know there’s a section with just soup? I didn’t know. The app had been hiding it from me.”

Others said the transition back had been difficult. “I had gotten used to not clipping 41 digital coupons before breakfast,” said Anita Cho, 39, of Norwalk, Conn. “Now they’re all back, and they expire Sunday, and I feel like I owe them something.”

• Clipping digital coupons
• Talking to a cashier
• Inner peace

Household Grocery Behavior During the Outage

Period	Clipping digital coupons	Talking to a cashier	Inner peace
Oct 11	38	0	10
Oct 13	0	6	40
Oct 15	0	9	55
Oct 17	0	12	62
Oct 19	0	14	70
Oct 21	41	1	12

Source: The Daily SKU Consumer Desk (sample size: one)

“For one week, I was a man who knew where the soup was.”

The chains are offering limited-time perks, which customers said they appreciated and would redeem as soon as they remembered their passwords.

At press time, Pomeroy had returned to ordering online but said he still drives by the store sometimes, just to look.