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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

My local grocery store had a drive-thru pickup back in the 90s. The strange part was you still had to pick your own items and check out conventionally. Then walk to your car and drive through the pickup area. They converted it to a cart return around the turn of the century.

If they simply had a way to order ahead they would have been two decades ahead of the current industry.

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There use to retail chain called BEST where the whole store area was a "showroom" and the products were on display outside of their packaging. You were encourage to touch and interact with the product. There was no stock on the showroom floor.

Once you made a decision you would go to the front to place an order, then go to another corner of the store where your item would come out on a conveyor belt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Products

Also, the people who owned BEST were really into art and had some pretty groovy looking stores.

http://www.siteenvirodesign.com/content/best-products

Sounds very much like Service Merchandise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise

We had a BEST for a while. It’s an ice rink now. IKEA has a very similar experience.

Our local grocery had that in the 1960s. As a toddler, I was fascinated by the mini-railway consisting of noisy steel rollers. It ran inside along the front wall behind the check-outs, did a u-turn thru a small hole, then outside along the front wall. A worker on the inside packed your groceries in brown paper bags and placed them on the rails. Another worker outside would load the bags from the rails to your car trunk when you arrived. Wow, that neuron hasn't fired in a long while.

Growing up, my local grocery store had a similar service. A friendly clerk helped my mom load up the car!

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