We’re having a hard time believing that this subway-car-cum-deli-counter is real. Like, it is almost certainly not real. But we kind of wish it were:
Although … would you buy meat on the subway? It’s convenient, yes, but subways aren’t exactly the cleanest. And we can’t imagine a subway car butcher shop would smell good. But there are plenty of groceries we’d pick up in the subway car, and it would turn your commute into useful chore-achieving time! You could pick up provisions for dinner “on the way home” without even altering your route to duck into the nearest supermarket. The only downside is that combining a subway car with a bodega would block usable seat space, and we don’t want to see the brawls that ensue.
But there’s a real system that matches the convenience of this idea with a better execution: a virtual grocery store located in the subway system. CNN reported last year:
Over the past five months, Tesco, the British chain, has been opening virtual grocery stores in subway stations and bus stops in Seoul. Commuters use their smartphones to scan and purchase these virtual items, which are delivered to their homes. …
The subway station walls look just like the shelves of a typical grocery store — only the items are just photographs and each is tagged with a QR Code (those black-and-white checkered things). Shoppers launch a Homeplus app and then scan the QR Codes of the items they’d like to purchase. Money is automatically deducted from the bank account of their choice, and the groceries are delivered to the address they’ve saved into the system. If you order by 1 p.m., the items arrive that very day.
See: still convenient, less likelihood that meat juice will get on the subway-car floor.
