I’ve always wondered how people who live in large urban areas, like New York City, get their groceries home. I drive my car to the grocery store once a week, load up, and have to make five or six trips back and forth from the car to the house to get it all inside. Do people who live in skyscrapers and don’t have a car have a delivery service? Do they go shopping for only those items they can carry back?
This is most of it. If you’re living in a fifth-floor walk-up, how big do you think your kitchen is? How much of a refrigerator do you think you have? They don’t build massive apartments for anyone too poor to afford, say, a grocery-buying service and/or regular taxi usage.
for me: groceries delivered weekly. Certainly not five trips worth. That would be an obscene amount of food to me! I don’t have kids, though.
Yes.
I’m in a middle-sized urban area: I live about 3 blocks from one supermarket, and 4 blocks from another, so I generally walk there and carry the groceries home in one or two shopping bags. Since they are so close, I can shop there every day if I wish, though I don’t go quite that often.
If I shopped less often, didn’t have access to my wife’s car, and lived further away, I could catch a taxi home with my shopping. That taxi fare once a week or so wouldn’t be a big expense.
I go shopping once every week or two, and can carry everything home in a single big reusable bag (in extreme cases, two big bags). There are a couple of grocery stores in easy walking distance, but if there weren’t, I’d hang the bags off the handlebars of my bike.
Admittedly I’m single, but if I had a family, I’d just go more often, or always bring two bags.
I carry three large tote bags and walk about 6 blocks each way to the supermarket every Saturday morning. I used to also drop by various markets to pick stuff up on the way home from work, but now that I’m required to carry my laptop back and forth every day, that’s become more difficult. I still usually make at least three separate trips on the weekend to three separate shopping areas (Farmer’s market/Whole Foods, local produce stand/small market, large supermarket).
I have an apartment-sized refrigerator, and minimal cabinet space, so I’m limited not only by what I can carry, but also by what I can store.
Wow, that’s a damnably big fridge!
I never thought of the apartment sized kitchen or refridgerator. We have three kids and we would be going to the store every day, if not for the one big trip on the weekend.
Chronos, don’t listen to Princess! I’d like to know you more than her! I believe that given a long enough lever we can move the whole earth! That’s physics talk! Can Princess offer you physics talk? No! I’m intrested. Maybe even outtrested! Send me details!
[Moderator Note]
While we usually disappear spam, given that this thread is about groceries I thought I would leave this one.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Yes, but Princess offered pictures. Do you have pictures? Perhaps pictures of your long lever,
tall two wheeled carts that could hold 2 or 3 paper grocery bags were used. only slightly larger than a paper grocery bag they could be used on mass transit.
I live on the 30th story, but, fortunately, I have an elevator.
I go to a grocery store about 3 blocks away, and try to buy less than 10 bags worth of groceries. I have a little Korean deli on the 1st story of my building where i can pick up odds and ends.
One nice thing about being in an urban area, although admittedly L.A. is far more car-centric than NYC., is that with the proximity of numerous stores it’s not a problem to go every day or two. I have a couple of major chain grocery stores within an easy walk of where I live now. But where I grew up, although also within L.A. city limits, we had to drive several miles each way to get to a store (or anywhere else).
Now if I could only find bags that would either (a) hang comfortably on my shoulders or (b) not scrape the ground when I carry them by the handles…
My answer was going to be “With the shopping cart, of course.”
I live in what I would consider to be an “urban” area (Los Angeles), but my condo has an attached garage so I do pretty much as they do in the 'burbs.
A lot of my neighbors who either don’t have cars or don’t want to spend the money on gas will just push the shopping cart all the way home. The local supermarket usually has a very small number of mis-matched carts at any given time, and I’ve seen someone in trucks driving around the neighborhood collecting the carts.
I used to live in an apartment where it was a bit of a walk from the car, which is more like whar the OP is really asking about. It was only two stories so I’d sometimes make shopping trips that exceeded what I could carry at one time, but most of the time when that would happen I would park another space (that did not belong to me) to unload before moving the car to my space. Other times I would leave some (hopefully) non-perishables in the car to unload the next day. Most of the time, though, I’d make sure to limit my shopping to what I can haul at one time.
Having to plan my grocery shopping for, say, a week at a time, or having to buy huge amounts of groceries at once, would drive me absolutely bonkers. I usually pop into a store every day or every couple of days, and buy the things I’ve happened to run out of as well as what I feel like having for dinner. I hardly ever buy more than what I can fit in my backpack.
Pick up things as you need them. Buying a few things on your way home from work or whatever is not a big deal. If you want to buy a lot you fill out a delivery sheet at the cash register. A short time later a delivery person will come to your apartment. Of course you will tip them.
You can go online for an operation (Fresh Direct) where you can place your order selecting from their choices. You designate a delivery time and again, the guys show up with the stuff in boxes and set it inside your door.
In a place like NYC delivery service is a big deal. Pizza, Chinese food, and now food from high end restaurants is available. Some McDonald’s do delivery. That also holds true for laundry/dry cleaning, prescriptions and a lot of other stuff.
It actually works quite well.
If you have a second residence outside the city you do your shopping there. It will save you a lot of money. Get back home, have the doorman help you unload the car, up the elevator and you’re good to go.
We often do as people have said; walk and go several times a week. Our closest grocery store is a 2 minute walk away. When we know we have a lot of big stuff, we will take a car to one of the bigger stores and load up, but that’s not the most frequent method of grocery shopping for us.
Our closest grocery store has free delivery for purchases over $60 (which is rather easy to reach). We have never taken advantage of it, but they deliver one of two ways: in a van for big stuff/further house or on a bike with a large bin in the front for the close addresses.
For what it’s worth, we live on the second floor of a three-story walkup, and our fridge is a nice big 20.7 cu ft one. Most people I know have normal sized fridges, though there are some with smaller “apartment” ones. The delivery guys were big and muscular and very much used t hauling appliances up twisty outdoor staircases and down narrow apartment hallways!
I bring my backpack to the supermarket. I tend to only buy small amounts at a time.