A large local grocery chain here now offers online shopping with the items either to be picked up or delivered. If you order delivery the next day, there’s no fee.
A good friend who was housebound last year started using the pick-up option when he couldn’t drive. I’d go pick the stuff up for him, bring it to his apartment, and put it away. Another friend, a single mom, who has two disabled children under age 10 uses the pick-up option to shop online and then goes and gets the groceries without having to worry about strapping both kids into a cart while shopping.
Today I was browsing the site and decided to give it a try. The site is very clear and user-friendly, with the idea (I’m sure) of attracting non-computer savvy types to take advantage of it. Every item in the store is listed with a picture, including all the sizes available, and all you do is click to add to cart, etc., just like other online shopping experiences. You choose your delivery time (or pick-up time) window, pay online, with plenty of options to change or bail at any time during the process.
I gotta say, I really liked it. I’m certainly able-bodied enough to go to the grocery store (which is only a mile or so from here), and I’ve got nothing but time, but it was fun. And for those of us who tend to have a hard time sticking to a grocery list (especially now that all the Halloween candy is out), it’s fabulous. No impulse buys. “Where did that bag of M&Ms and that quart of of gelato come from?” :eek:
In the olden days, grocery delivery was common… heck, delivery of lots of goods was common. I worked for a major department store in the 1960s, and many customers had every purchase delivered, and never walked out of the store carrying anything.
Nobody will deliver to me. But a pick up service is available for the Wal-Mart superstore near me. Of course the independent Pharmacy I use was a little slower to offer call in refills and a drive through window.
I’ve never used the pick-up service at Wal-Mart. It will give me another option to avoid going in somewhere. I’m slightly agoraphobic and I latch on quick to any way to further that aim. So I resist. I fight it daily.
Online grocery shopping is well-established in the UK, has been for many years now.
However I’m the opposite to you when it comes to impulse buys! I’ve explored the deep back catalogue of Tesco’s online offerings, I can tell you. “Why do I have six different kinds of olives in this one delivery!?!”
I subscribed to Instacart this summer and it is amazing for me. What I like is that there are several stores I can choose to get deliveries from. I don’t have a car and live in a remote area so it’s been wonderful.
I depend on delivery (disabled). It’s occasionally frustrating when the search tool isn’t indexed the way I expect, and I can’t find items that I know they have but overall it’s wonderful to have.
Instacart just made me an offer yesterday. I know nothing about it, but I’m intrigued.
I use Walmart’s online grocery service. It’s free and much faster to have someone come out with everything already picked and packed than to go in the store and collect everything myself. The only issue is that sometimes they don’t have something I ordered, and a few times the order wasn’t ready at the time it was supposed to be. Guess I got what I paid for there! They just recently added delivery service (which surprised me in this semi-rural area) but for now I am fine with picking stuff up. I have other errands to run anyway.
NYC resident here. Many groceries offered delivery even before the internet. One would go in, choose their products, and tell the check out clerks they wanted delivery. Helpful for a city where many, many residents don’t have vehicles and may be making several shopping stops. Bad for frozen items though.
Now we have online shopping (Peapod and Fresh Direct are most prevalent) where one can either order and pick-up without walking the aisles, or simply have it delivered. Very convenient when my car was in the shop getting bodywork. They may not pick out the exact same produce and meat I would, but I’m also not getting the dregs of the bin either.
Heck, every time I’m in my local grocery it seems like half the shoppers are people wearing lime-green Instacart shirts and staring at their phones as they zip around filling a cart. All the stores I shop at have installed huge lockers and freezers near the front doors to accommodate the on-line shoppers.
Peapod finally has service to my neighborhood, after all this time. They’ve been making deliveries from the local Giant for at least a decade, and we live only about 12 minutes away from it in an area with several subdivisions, yet they only added service to my neighborhood since the March thread.
Since I found out about this only earlier this week, I haven’t used it yet. But I wouldn’t mind cutting out a grocery trip or three.
I’ve been making more use of Walmart’s pickup option while coping with a temporarily disabled DH. Helps a lot to be able to swing in on my way home and have the nice helper bring stuff to my car instead of taking the time to wade through a crowded store. When I need heavier stuff, I suppose delivery would be a good move, but I have trouble convincing myself to pay that much for it when money is a bit tight.
I live in England and get my groceries delivered weekly by the supermarket chain Tesco.
I pick an hour slot on a particular day, and they have always turned up in that time (except once when they were 15 minutes late - and they contacted me to let me know that. )
The drivers bring my goods in and help me unpack (I’m a pensioner.)
Because the groceries come from a regional hub, there is a huge choice (much better than a single supermarket.)
I guess I’ll find out soon enough, but our local Wal-Mart is constructing a large, outdoor, open-sided facility that they say will be for online order pickup and I’m wondering how this will work. It’s not physically connected to the store, so if someone drives in for pickup, are they going to have stuff piled in the (sometimes freezing) open, or will they bring it out from the store interior?
I and my wife became super, super busy around April-June of this year and we received three free deliveries from Walmart. We had used the pickup at the store option once, but we tried delivery.
It was great. Their online store matches the in store prices and inventory, a key thing. I hate if you go online and they don’t have an accurate representation of the store online.
We ended up doing pickup orders after the free deliveries ran out and they are awesome.
Result: Walmart has won our business over Meijer, something unimaginable a year ago. Our local Meijer has yet to put in pickup orders. The moment they do, we’ll go back to them.
My estimate would be that Walmart has cost us 5-10% more(Meijer really is amazing). That amount is kind of the fee we pay and we are busy enough to not mind.
Instacart is great. I can’t recommend it any more highly. Your groceries are delivered in a couple of hours, you’re notified every step of the way. The driver will text you if the store is out of something on your list and ask if you want a substitution. You can see in real time what items are being picked up by the driver and when they are checked out. You’re notified when the driver is on their way to your house and track them by GPS so you can stand ready to answer the door. Payment is made from within the app, so you never have to hand money or a card to the driver, and you have the option to add a tip.
I’m curious. Some of y’all referred to delivery fees. What do those run on, say, a $70 or $100 grocery order? Is the fee amount prohibitive or is it just a case of not wanting to pay a fee on principle (the “I hate paywalls” mindset)? In my case, the $$ value of sticking to the list far outweighs any fee.
As I said in the OP, my store doesn’t charge a delivery fee if you don’t want the order delivered the same day. Which is really nice.
EVERY grocery store in my area offers this with pickup or delivery available. Some of them have their own in house shoppers and deliverers, while others do in house shopping/picking but outsource the delivery and some outsource both parts to services like Shipt or Instacart.
I have not used the delivery services, but I have used Giant Eagle’s curbside pick up when they offered it for free plus coupons and extra free gas.
I know some people who do the deliveries via “gig services” and hate it, especially when they have to do things like carry 20 cases of Walmart water up 3 flights of stairs and get paid $5 (which is frequently working for free since the mileage deduction is more) from Doordash. On the other hand every time I am in Meijer there are as many Shipt contractors as regular customers. So they must be pretty popular.
When we lived in LA we used amazon fresh almost exclusively and it was amazing. We tried the pick up option from out local grocery store a couple of times but i didn’t like having drive to the store any way and sitting in the car for 10-15 minutes while they figured out who i was, i paid, and they loaded the car is worse then just going in and shopping. Now our small town store has started offering pick up and we’re not interested but if they start delivery we’ll probably got back to that even though the store is only 6 blocks away.
I’m certainly able-bodied enough to go to the grocery store (which is only a mile or so from here), and I’ve got nothing but time, but it was fun. And for those of us 
who tend to have a hard time sticking to a grocery list (especially now that all the Halloween candy is out), it’s fabulous. No impulse buys. “Where did that bag of M&Ms and that quart of of gelato come from?” :eek:
)