So-still no recipe suggestions for my unexpected haul? I’m disappointed in the Dope.
But earlier grocery stores used to deliver, you just had to call them on the phone to place an order. I don’t order groceries, but I do use Drizly from time to time, to have booze delivered. It pulls from various local liquor stores throughout the city; it’s convenient because if I’m looking for some hard to find bottle, I can order it from across town; if anything, it’s supporting local stores.
I occasionally have my groceries delivered, but I’m more satisfied when I order them online and do in-store pickup. My biggest beef with Instacart and Shipt shoppers is that they rarely honor my wishes with respect to reusable bags. I don’t care if my stuff is unloaded directly onto my entry way, but most delivery shoppers seem to give me MORE plastic bags than if I had not specified in the first place. I don’t know if it’s out of spite or what, but it’s really irritating.
When I do pickup, they just leave the items in the cart, bring them out and I can throw them into my reusables in the trunk. Anyway, I love being able to just pick items up - it saves me a good hour and I can just stop on my way from work to get my daughter. It also saves me money because I don’t wind up making impulse buys.
In contrast, my husband thinks it’s cheating. Which is odd - he’s from India and had servants for EVERYTHING growing up.
I’ve thought about it in moments of hunger and laziness, but ultimately I actually like going to the supermarket.
I guess I must just go to the right ones, then. The one you describe seems much more cramped than anything I’ve experienced here. Here, I’ve actually found them quite pleasant to shop at, though I’ve never been to that Wrigleyville location, just the one on Roosevelt in the South Loop and the huge one on Kingsbury in Lincoln Park. That one is downright fun.
True story from a DC Whole Foods: there was an unattended cart in the middle of the aisle blocking all traffic. My wife rolled it off to the side so that we could pass with our cart, when a super-entitled yuppie at the other end of the aisle came bolting down the aisle grabbed my wife’s cart and said “how do you like someone moving your cart!?” Whole Foods in DC pulls in ever douche in the city who thinks s/he is the center of the universe.
My go to grocery store is the DC-chain Yes! Market in my neighborhood, but it is small and doesn’t have a wide selection. I like it because it came to my neighborhood when a lot of stores wouldn’t. I could see doing my regular shopping there and supplementing it with delivery from Whole Foods.
We do the Walmart pickup ourselves fairly frequently. Usually not for fresh produce, or if we do, it’s for stuff that’s relatively the same like limes or a sack of apples, where there’s little difference between all the ones in the bin.
But for stuff like laundry detergent, ziploc bags, frozen vegetables, etc… it’s great. We can set up the order, schedule the pickup window within an hour, and then just swing by when it’s convenient (the Walmart is like 650 yards from our house), and they bring it out.
It’s actually more convenient, because we aren’t constrained by someone else’s schedule, and the in-store checkout is always a sluggish beatdown. I imagine that’s only true though, because we live so close. If we had to make a special trip, it would become a lot more likely that we’d just go in and shop.
Substitutions aren’t that bad- they tell you ahead of time, and you can reject them. What does irk me is when I want ONE specific thing, and throw in a few other items that would be nice to get, and then I find out that my item is not in stock. Then I have to go by and pick up the other crap that I didn’t really want.
Old Hudson and Landry routine:
The store I order from doesn’t use plastic bags at all. Or any bags. They deliver stuff loose in a crate and just unload the crate on my table.
We use Amazon Fresh. There’s a monthly fee of $15, regardless of how often you use it. They pick from Whole Foods and other products in their distribution center. My wife normally shops on her iPad before going to bed, and selects a delivery time between 5-7 am. When we get up the next morning the groceries are in paper bags on the front porch. There are no substitutions, as their inventory is up to date on their site.
We have found the convenience great. The closest grocery store is about 15 minutes away. You don’t have to drive, there’s no dragging the cart to the car, loading and unloading at the house. And the front porch is closer to the kitchen than the garage is.
We still run by the store for certain specialty items but the bulk of our grocery buying is delivered.
Peapod will take back any plastic bags you might have, and recycle them (at least, that’s what they say). Never had a problem giving them bags from other stores as well.
The stuff I like most like sliced meat and salad they don’t deliver, so no.
Not to call you out, but considering the charge based on the cost of what you’re buying is a common mental accounting mistake.
$10 on $100 is a 10% cost increase, while $10 on $10 is a 100% increase, but it’s the same $10.
The relevant question is how much your time is worth. If it’s worth $10 of your time not to drive to the grocery store and find the things and wait in line, then it’s worth $10, no matter what you’re getting (assuming you would be going to the store to get the things).
Obviously, it still makes sense to group deliveries together so you’re not paying lots of fees, and a large grocery order probably takes longer to get off the shelf, so you do save a bit more in both ways if you generally have large orders delivered.
We only get shelf-stable things delivered. Either through Amazon or Walmart. Although I should look into the other delivery. With two small children and both of us working, our time is at quite a premium these days.
Amazon Fresh does.
I prefer to do my own grocery shopping.
My local store offers it (both delivery and pick-up), and I’ve considered it, and I’ve urged my senior parents to try it, but at the end of the day I think I actually enjoy going to the grocery store.
It’s getting popular around here. I think more than for seniors (who enjoy going to the grocery store) it’s really popular for parents. Not even “busy” parents…I think parents would just really, really prefer not to have to drag their kiddos around the store. Kiddos would agree.
I have been getting grocery delivery since about 2004/05.
I still go to the store because I really like grocery shopping, but sometimes I just don’t have the time.
I have used a variety of services.
Peapod - they shop out of Stop & Shop here in the Boston metro area, I believe. They are the first service I started using back in aught-4/aught-5 (trying to sound old-timey). Their treatment of my groceries left a lot to be desired. My produce always looked like they’d been instructed to choose the worst specimens they could find. Bread was often mangled. And their drivers were dirty, unkempt and surly.
Roche Bros - a local chain. I switched to them when they spun up delivery in 2005/06. An amazing change from Peapod. They made good produce choices for me, cold food was cold, frozen food was frozen and room temp food was room temp. And the drivers didn’t seem to hate their jobs. Their shopping software left a lot to be desired, but it was OK and they eventually upgraded it and it is better now. I’ve used them off and on ever since.
Amazon Fresh - I started using them in … 2012? maybe later? I loved the unattended delivery, they did a decent job with choosing and handling food, but their selection wasn’t great and they too frequently couldn’t find something I asked for. Between that and the excessive ice packs and dry ice and packaging I stopped using them.
Peapod again - I tried them again in 2016-ish and they’re much improved in service and treatment of my groceries.
Wegmans via Instacart - Started using this as soon as it became available. Last year, I think. In general they do a decent job, tho things are “out of stock” frequently enough that I suspect the shoppers are not trying very hard sometimes to locate the requested item. Their shoppers are also either not very careful with or not very knowledgeable about produce because I get some interesting mistakes. Like a parsnip instead of a jicama, or fresh basil instead of sage. The drivers vary widely in how well they temp-control my groceries. The drivers are using their own vehicles, which are less reliable temp-wise than the company trucks used by other services.
One advantage of going in person is that sometimes you can score half price fillet steak, like I did today. 
This thread has inspired me to re-check the availability of grocery delivery. And the answer still is, neither Giant nor Safeway delivers here, a mere 12-minute drive from their stores; nor does Weis, 20 minutes away. Nor does Amazon Fresh deliver here.
Instacart will deliver from Giant or Safeway. The impression I get from the mentions they’ve gotten in this thread is that they’re more expensive than the groceries’ own delivery services, and not all that great. And I don’t tend to shop much at Giant or Safeway in the first place.
Weis, which is cheaper than all of the above, is right off my way home from work and usually isn’t crowded at that time of day, and the local grocery is five minutes from my house and never has lines. And I mostly enjoy grocery shopping, so I think I’ll keep doing what I’m doing.
Wow. Well, yes, I see now.