With the internet of things, grocery shopping should be done as follows:
1. Refrigerator notices the milk carton is telling it that it only has 1/4 left (user adjustable threshold) and the hamburger is down to one half pound.
2. Refrigerator sends message, via your account on the internet, to local amazon food store (which is a non-descript box on a cheap piece of real estate and two parking spaces for the guys that ensure it keeps functioning).
3. Robotics within the facility load the items onto a self driving delivery vehicle along with other orders within your vicinity.
4. Vehicle shows up at your home and pulls up to a robotic access door/corridor on the side of the house and places the items on a conveyor belt inside the open door.
5. Items are placed within the refridgerator via the robotics in this corridor.
6. You see the bill on your credit card. You haven’t purchased food directly yourself for years, except for gas-burgers.
7. Robots pre-chew food for those too lazy to chew for themselves and then force-feed the resulting mash to their pathetic immobile human charges.
8. When the morbidly obese humans are sufficiently fattened up, Adipose Industries harvests them.
Really, I’m seeing a great mashup of Judge Dredd and Doctor Who here.
No, #2 is your bathroom scales alerting the refrigerator of your 3 lb weight gain so there’s a stop on further milk purchases.
I made a similar suggestion to an R&D engineer in the food storage industry. He said they’ve been working on it.