To market, to market. Non-shopping at Addie's.

My grandfather, Jake Wolf, was a butcher who built his meat market into a grocery store. I was not yet two when Grandpa died, so I have no recall of him at Wolf's Market. But I have a vivid picture in my mind of Jake Wolf, in his long white coat and jaunty paper white butcher's cap, beaming behind his meat counter. (I don't have a copy of this photo, but I can see it in my mind's eye as clearly as if I were holding it in my hand. My sister Trish couldn't find the one I had in mind - the one with the overhead lights bouncing off Grandpa's glasses, but she did find this one from an early vintage. When Jake Wolf's Market was just Jake Wolf's Butcher Shop, not a full blown grocery. That's Jake Wolf on the left. No idea who the other two guys are.

Somehow, the store stayed open after Jake Wolf's death.

Did my Uncle Jack have something to do with running it?  That's what my memory tells me. But Jack would have been just 21 years old when his father died. Is it possible he jumped in and kept the store going?

I do know that Wolf's Market did stay open because, fast forward a couple of years, and on my family's biannual trip to Chicago, we stopped by. Uncle Jack was there, as was my Uncle Bob - then maybe 15 or 16 years old - who was wearing a white apron, stocking shelves and packing boxes for delivery to customers. 

Jack or Bob gave us - my sister Kath and I, maybe my brother Tom - balloons. And not just any old balloon.

This one was in the shape (sort of) of a man and had cardboard feet, so that, when you tossed the balloon man up, it landed on its feet. 

Later "the boys" - as Jack and Bob were always called - turned the grocery store into a ship chandlers business, delivering groceries to Great Lakes merchant ships.

Fast forward a couple more years, and we went down to the Chicago piers and watched "the boys" making deliveries. I remember Bob hoisting a carton full of groceries on his shoulder, and walking up the gangway of a freighter.

So I knew from the get go that groceries could be delivered.

I also knew it because my family's groceries were delivered every Friday afternoon. Not, of course, from Wolf's Market, which was 1,000 miles from Worcester. But from Morris Market, a small non-chain grocery store that was probably a lot like Wolf's Market. 

It was owned by butcher Morris Burack, who manned the meat counter, and run by Morris, his wife, and their daughter and son-in-law. 

When my grandmother Wolf made her biannual trip to Worcester, she always made a beeline over to Morris Market to yack it up with Morris and his wife. Grandma prattled to them in German; they prattled back in Yiddish. 

Anyway, every Friday morning, my mother called her order in to the Morris Market. Every Friday afternoon, it was delivered to our house in a station wagon driven by the son-in-law, our neighbor Joey who worked there as a teenager, or - later on - by one of Morris' grandsons as they got old enough.

So when online grocery shopping began, and was positioned as an industry disruptor, my reaction was pretty much 'meh.' 

Who'da thunk that my mother was in the vanguard? Liz and the folks who called in their orders to Wolf's Market or Morris Market all those decades ago.

Personally, I have zero desire to order online (or by phone, for that matter). 

Even during the throes of the pandemic, I masked up and trekked off to the grocery story during their early morning geezer hours. Heavy items in my backpack, lighter items in my recyclable shopping bags. Who needs delivery?

Basically, I really don't trust anyone to shop the way I do.

Are they going to examine the "best by" dates stamped on bread, egg, milk? The "packed on" dates on cut fruit? Are they going to eyeball the peppers for the best looking one? 

If there's no quart of Brigham's Mocha Almond ice cream, will they know enough to substitute a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia and/or Talenti Pistachio? Or are they going to make an error in judgement and swap in Brigham's Mocha Chip?

Are they going to make spur of the moment 'why not?' decisions and spring for scallops for dinner?

So, I'm not a candidate for online shopping that's delivered to my door. And, even if I had a car and lived in the suburbs, I'm not a candidate to shop at Addie's, the new kid in town when it comes to innovative grocery concepts. Addie's just opened what it hopes to be the first of 2,000 stores in a suburban town south of Boston.

From the outside, Addie's just looks like same old/same old online shopping experience. They don't deliver - you drive-by and pick up your order - but that doesn't look a lot different than curbside pickup.

But Addie's looks different from the inside. Because no one can physically go into Addie's and push a cart around, the aisles are narrower. And an algorithm has determined what food goes where, so items aren't logically grouped. No canned corn near canned beans; no flour near sugar and other baking needs. Instead, the aisles are optimized for speedy pickup by the "shoppers." (For now, these are humans, but this model has AI/robot written all over it.)

Anyway, here's what Addie's has to say:

We built Addie’s because we value your time, your money, and your food – so nothing goes to waste.

Traditional grocery stores are designed for display and distraction: Spend more! Pick me! And online options are designed for convenience with few guarantees: Add to your cart and hope we have it in stock!

Addie’s is designed to be different. We’re offering you a shopping experience that’s faster than traditional supermarkets, more accurate than other online options, and easier to fit into your life than delivery or curbside.

We’ve reimagined every aspect of our operation to ensure orders are fresh, complete, and priced competitively. We also pride ourselves on a customer-curated selection that reflects your preferences and suggestions. And we do it all sustainably – using just a quarter of the energy required of regular supermarkets.

It’s a delightful experience we call drive-up grocery – all the convenience of ordering online, without any of the compromise. (Source: Addie's)

They're big differentiator is that inventory is updated in real time. If they don't have exactly what you want, you'll know right away. No finding out what's missing when the order's delivered. Or worse, having to put up with a substitute you don't want. So good. But great? Disruption-worthy?

The inspiration for Addie's came to co-founder/CEO Jim McQuade - a Harvard MBA with a couple of science degrees from Princeton; i.e., a pretty bright guy - when "his wife asked him to pick up a few items at the supermarket on his way home.

"It took me 25 minutes to get what we needed and to get home," he said. "The kids were hungry. I was late. It was not a great experience." (Source: NBC Boston)

McQuade tried the concept out a while back - and failed, attributing the failure to the market not yet being ready for this sort of market. Now, post-covid, he believes the moment has arrived. 

I don't see that Addie's is so different and breakthrough when compared to online grocery shopping. 

Yes, it's good to learn in real time whether something's available or not. But is that such a big lure?

Maybe if I were a working mom with a couple of kids, desperate to save any time where and when I could, I'd feel different. But, meh-squared.

But what do I know?

Addie's has received $10.1M in seed funding from the late Clay Christensen's venture fund. Christensen was a Harvard B-School professor who came up with the concept of "innovative disruption" (e.g., Uber and Lyft vs. medallion cabs; now that was a disrupter!) and whose 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma had a major impact on business thinking.

So the smart money - at least $10.1M worth of it - is on Addie's.

We'll see. 

As for me? I'll just keep schlepping over to Roach Brothers, examining the "best by" dates and reaching back into the recess of the shelves looking for whatever's freshest.