Forty minutes.
Every single week.
Buying the same things.
The online grocery shop is the longest routine wait in retail: forty minutes of browsing, searching and re-adding the same items. This demonstrates spending that wait differently — a week prepared around the household, reviewed before anything is bought.
“Nobody enjoys the weekly shop. Everybody does it anyway. That is a lot of unspent attention.”
Fernmarket · an invented exampleThe forty-minute shop
Someone works through the same categories in the same order they did last week, adding the same items, searching for the one thing that moved aisles, and forgetting the thing they will need on Thursday. Nothing about this wait is a surprise, and none of it is being used.
A loyalty programme already knows what a household buys. Using that to award points at the till is the smallest possible use of it. Using it to give someone their Sunday back is the largest.
What happens now
Forty minutes of manual re-entry against a system that already knows the answer.
What it costs
A routine that feels like a chore is the routine most easily won by whoever makes it shorter.
What the concept does
Drafts the week from what this household actually buys, and stops. Nothing is purchased without review.
Every shop moment, one pattern.
Each of these is a moment your customer already spends with you. Each can carry what the phone above shows: watch the work, earn the wait, answer one thing.
Be relevant — right thing, right moment · Be respectful — short, skippable, quiet by design · Be measurable — real impact, on the record · Be Aotearoa — built here, for how Kiwis actually wait
Every wait in the weekly shop
Six moments a household waits through every week, from the Sunday list to the thing that runs out on Thursday.
The list writes itself from what this house already buys, so she edits instead of remembering.
She finds the thing that moved without walking the store twice.
The queue answers the question she would have got home and asked herself.
She sees the substitution while it can still be changed, instead of at the door.
She gets her afternoon back instead of guarding the front door.
The gap that repeats every week stops repeating.
Four steps, every time.
- The signalSomething in your own systems says a person is now waiting, and roughly how long for.
- The predictionHow long this one will really take — not the average, this one.
- The valueSomething worth their attention goes into that window: an answer, a credit, a thing prepared while they wait.
- The exchangeThey get value. You get a customer who stayed, and one optional answer you have always wanted.
This is the reward layer, running for real on this page. Drag to scratch it. Nothing is collected, nothing is sent — it is here so the idea is something you do, not something you read.
US retailers lose an estimated $37.7 billion a year to customers who abandon because of long queues, split roughly $15.8b to competitors and $21.9b abandoned outright (Adyen with 451 Research). The New York State Department of Labor reported a 48% reduction in hang-ups after introducing virtual queuing. Theme parks moving to virtual queues reported a 36% lift in per-capita spending, because guests spent the wait somewhere that sold something. A Seattle-Tacoma Airport study found 63% of passengers said they shopped or ate more because they saved time in the security queue.
Every figure on this page carries its source. Overseas figures are shown as overseas figures — we have not found a published New Zealand equivalent, and we will not invent one.
One week. Four households.
The same store, four baskets. Nothing is purchased, substituted or charged by the concept — every draft waits for a person.
A template sends the same thing to everyone and changes the name. What matters here is the case that should get something different — or nothing at all.
The rules beside each draft are placeholders. A pilot replaces them with your actual policies. We have not seen those, and this concept does not guess at them.
The checks that run before a basket reaches anyone
Groceries touch health, money and children weekly, which is more often than almost anything else assembl builds for.
Drafts are held against the Fair Trading Act 1986, the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012, the Privacy Act 2020, and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.
Press run to see what it catches — and what it refuses to produce at all.
One room. Your people, your agents, every action on the record.
Every concept on this page would run inside a private room like this: your team and the agents in the same space, drafts appearing with receipts, a named person saying yes. It runs on infrastructure you approve — and what is said in the room stays in it.
receipt sources: your rate card · rules: yours · held for approval
Client information stays in your room. Six months later, “where did this come from?” is one line, not a search.
Yours
Runs where you approve — your own room, your own record. Nothing in it leaves it.
On the record
Every agent action lands as a line a person can read — not a log only a vendor can open.
People decide
Drafts wait for a named person. The room shows who said yes, and when.
This panel is a concept picture, not a live room — a pilot stands up the real one, on infrastructure you approve.
The week, before anything reaches a customer
Illustrative and fictional. No production access is requested by this concept.
| Household | Count | Prepared | Waiting on | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 people, one gluten free | — | Draft basket, changes labelled | Customer to review | Awaiting review |
| Stated weekly cap | — | Draft under cap, trade-offs listed | Customer to review | Awaiting review |
| Restricted lines in usual basket | — | Separated, unselected | Customer to add | Awaiting review |
| Medical dietary restriction | — | Nothing drafted | A person | Held — no basket |
| Restriction looks inferred | — | Nothing drafted | Confirm the fact first | Held — no basket |
| Store allocation unknown | — | Draft held | Store assignment | Parked |
Counts are blank because this is a demonstrator. There is no Fernmarket, and therefore no customers.
Every draft carries its own working.
Not a log somebody has to go and find. The provenance travels with the work — what it read, which rules it held, who must approve it, and what it refused to do.
This matters most on the day someone asks why it said what it said.
- Artefact
- Draft basket — 4 people, one gluten-free eater, one substitution
- Read
- Invented range and stock for an invented retailer · household fields: purchase history, stated dietary needs, stated weekly cap, restricted-line history. No payment data. No health records.
- Rules held
- Fair Trading Act 1986 · Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 · Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 · Health Information Privacy Code 2020 · Privacy Act 2020
- Refused
- Nothing was purchased or charged. No substitution was made silently. No basket was drafted where a medical restriction was on record or a dietary need appeared inferred. No restricted item was auto-added. No promotion was inserted.
- Approver
- A named person. Unsent until then.
- Prepared
- —
- Reference
- —
What this will never do
It does not send. It prepares, and a named person sends. It does not publish to any channel, commit spend, move money, or make a decision that belongs to a person. It does not pretend to be a person — every draft says it was prepared by a machine and approved by a human.
No production access is requested by this concept.
Scope
In a real engagement: the weekly draft basket for opted-in households at one store, six weeks. Not pricing, not promotions, not fulfilment, not payment.
Access
Range and stock feeds, and the field names for purchase history, stated dietary needs, stated caps and restricted lines. No payment data. No health information.
Scorecard
Baskets a customer approved with fewer than three edits. Minutes returned per shop. Held cases a person agreed should have been held. And whether a category manager can find a single line they would call advertising.
Fail any line of the scorecard and we change the design or stop.
What a pilot actually asks of you.
Written out in full, because the honest version of this is short and most of it is your time, not your money.
One named person
The approver. Every draft stops with them and nothing reaches a customer until they say so. Expect about two hours a week — reading drafts, not managing a project.
One situation, not the business
In a real engagement: the weekly draft basket for opted-in households at one store, six weeks. Not pricing, not promotions, not fulfilment, not payment.
Read-only access, nothing that writes
Range and stock feeds, and the field names for purchase history, stated dietary needs, stated caps and restricted lines. No payment data. No health information. No production credentials, no write permissions, no access to anything the pilot does not need.
Your actual rules
The policies, limits and words the drafts must be held against. Every rule on this page is a placeholder standing in for yours. An afternoon with whoever owns them is usually enough.
Six weeks, then a real decision
Scored on: Baskets a customer approved with fewer than three edits. Minutes returned per shop. Held cases a person agreed should have been held. And whether a category manager can find a single line they would call advertising. Fail any line of that and we change the design or stop. You keep everything drafted either way.
A fixed fee, agreed in writing first
No number is published on this page, because it depends on which situation you pick. Whatever it is, it is agreed before any work starts and it does not move.
Run the pilot.
Say yes to the six weeks above, and add anything you would change first. Nothing here is fixed — most pilots move a line or two before they start, and the notes below are how that happens.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz with your notes in it. Nothing is collected by this page.
- Six weeks, one situation, scored against a written line
- Read-only access, nothing production
- A named approver — nothing sends without them
- A fixed fee, agreed in writing before anything starts
- Stop any time. You keep what was drafted
Pick a verb.
Not “book a demo”. Any of these is a real next step, and the last one is a perfectly good answer.
What is the one constraint we have got wrong?
Every concept is built from the outside. There is always something about how Fernmarket actually runs that we could not see. One line is enough.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz. Nothing is collected by this page.