Product design question

How would you solve the inventory issues with Uber Grocery?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Product and operations problem-solving for a marketplace with real-time inventory accuracy challenges.

Clarify the core issue: items shown as available are actually out of stock at fulfillment time, causing cancellations or substitutions.
Identify root causes: inventory data lag from partner stores, no real-time sync, and manual shopper substitution errors.
Propose real-time or near-real-time inventory sync with partner store systems.
Propose predictive out-of-stock flagging based on historical sell-through.
Propose a clear in-app substitution approval flow for the customer.
Prioritize real-time sync first, since stale data is the root cause; substitution UX is a downstream mitigation.

Identifies the root cause, stale inventory data, rather than only treating the symptom of bad substitutions.
Proposes a technical fix, real-time sync with partner systems, appropriate to the actual cause.
Adds a predictive layer, flagging likely-out-of-stock items, as a practical fallback when perfect sync isn't feasible.
Distinguishes the root-cause fix from the downstream UX mitigation, addressing both.

Proposing only a better substitution UX without addressing the underlying inventory data problem.
Assuming perfect real-time inventory sync is trivially achievable without acknowledging integration complexity.

How would you handle partner stores that can't support real-time inventory integration?
How would you measure the impact of predictive out-of-stock flagging?