Most of us hate going to the grocery store. Fighting for parking, dealing with the crowds, dodging shopping carts, waiting in long lines at checkout—they're all annoying and make us want to avoid the supermarket altogether. Plus, grocery stores are full of money-sucking pitfalls like endcaps and deceptive pricing. Thankfully, we live in the future, and we can have groceries brought to us instead of having to go get them. Here's how to get started with grocery delivery, save some money, avoid the grocery-store hassle, and let your food come to you.
Find A Grocery Delivery Service Near You
If you live in a major city, suburb, or other metro area, odds are there's a major national grocery chain near you that will deliver. Peapod is one of the larger national chains, and offers grocery delivery in major metro areas on the East Coast of the United States and most supermarkets owned by Royal Ahold. Safeway, North America's second largest supermarket chain, offers grocery delivery in markets nationwide under its own brand and the names of its subsidiary stores. If you don't have a Safeway in your area, you probably have a store that's part of the Safeway family, like Von's, Pavilions, and Genuardi's.
You don't have to rely on major supermarket chains though. Amazon Fresh supports markets in the Seattle metro area, Fresh Direct supports the New York City area, Schwan's offers an all-online subscription-style frozen food shopping and delivery service that supports most of the United States, ShopFoodEx also services all 50 US states, many countries around the world, and APO/FPO/DPO boxes worldwide, Netgrocer offers US and international grocery deliveries, and Amazon Grocery offers select items to customers anywhere in the US.
Check your local supermarket's web site to see if they offer a home delivery option—many let you sign up and shop online right on their web sites, others will hand you off to a third-party that manages the process for them. If none of the above cover you, odds are one of your local stores does.
Photo by Glenn Fleishman.
How to Get Started with Your Local Delivery Service
While there's no one single service that supports everyone, most of them work just like any other online retailer. You'll need to sign up for an account, shop for your groceries, add items to your cart, and check out with your preferred credit or debit card. Just like when you buy a DVD at Amazon or music at iTunes, all of the standard tips to avoid fraud online and tips to avoid online scams apply when you're shopping at an online supermarket.
When you check out, the first thing you'll notice is the delivery charge, usually something like $5 or another specific fee based on the size of your order. Think of it as the equivalent to a shipping fee, and many grocery stores will waive the delivery fee entirely or give you a discount for your first order or your first repeat order. The last thing you'll need to do is schedule a delivery window when you know you'll be home to accept your food. When I order through Peapod, I can reschedule deliveries up to a few hours before the delivery window, so if I know I won't make it home in time for the doorbell, I can always bump out the delivery by a couple of hours.
Photo by Atomic Taco.
How To Save Money Shopping for Groceries Online
We've discussed several times how grocery stores do all kinds of things to trick you into spending money, and how even buying in bulk doesn't always save you much. Shopping for groceries online gives you a way to avoid all of those bait and switch practices. You'll never be tempted by flashy packaging on a product you would never have purchased anyway, featured products on "end caps" that look like they're on sale but really aren't a bargain, deceptive per-unit pricing, and "everyday low prices" that look like sale tags. Shopping online is a much more straight-forward matter. Prices are clearly marked, and if you have a shopping list you can search for specific items, add them to your cart, and check out immediately, as opposed to walking through aisles, going back through the store to pick up something you forgot, or falling for those impulse buys that somehow always make their way into your cart.
Also, online prices are usually competitive with in-store pricing, and grocery chains honor their sale prices from their circulars in their online stores, and many even have virtual coupons you can apply to your order. Since sales circulars are usually also on the supermarket's web site, it's even easier to check what's on sale before you buy than it is if you're standing in the store. Plus, if you're on a budget or just money conscious, you can see your subtotal increase with every single item you add to your cart. If you break your budget, you can remove something from your cart to get you under budget before you're standing at the checkout counter. As you tick off your shopping list, you get instant feedback on how much you'll spend, which unlike shopping in a store, can help you get your grocery costs under control.
What To Buy When Grocery Shopping Online
Even though shopping for groceries on the internet is easy and cheap, there are some things you shouldn't rush into buying without building up a trusting relationship with your local delivery service. Like any relationship, diving in headfirst might expose you to some things you weren't sure you wanted to know. Dip your toes in with a simple, light order first and buy a few things you know the delivery service can't possibly screw up so you can vet the service out. Here are some safe items:
Non-perishables.
Beverages.
Household and cleaning products.
Personal hygeine products.
Pet food and supplies.
Some dairy products (milk, juice, butter, cheese, yogurt).
Frozen Food.
If you've noticed, all of these products are pretty difficult to mess up. Most of them are shelf-stable, packaged, branded, and sealed products that you don't have to trust a delivery person or personal shopper to choose for you. Until you've built up a rapport with your delivery service, start with the basics: products that you know don't need to be selected based on appearance or on-shelf quality, and products with brand names that are easily identifiable.
For example, personal hygiene products are almost always sealed, but they're also a category where most people have real brand preferences. You can test your delivery service by ordering your favorite brands, just to see if they keep them in stock, and to see if the person picking out your order pays attention to your request and doesn't make any unwanted substitutions. The same applies to household and cleaning products. There have to be at least a half-dozen different Clorox cleaning sprays, but pick the one you like, and if you get it, you'll know the delivery service is paying attention, or using technology that minimizes those kinds of errors. It's much better than sending a driver into a stockroom with a printout of your order, hoping they pick the right things from the shelves.
What to Avoid When Buying Groceries Online...At Least Initially
The things you generally don't want to trust a delivery service with until you get to know them are the types of products that require a subjective judge of quality before they go into your cart. Most delivery services keep their own stock separate from the grocery stores they partner with, and they only keep as much stock as they need for their deliveries. Even though their products are turned over and rotated more often than your supermarket shelves probably are, there are a few things you may want more personal control over.
Meat, deli meats, fish, seafood.
Unpackaged produce.
Some dairy products (eggs, gourmet cheese).
Perishable products and goods where you're not quite comfortable letting a stranger choose for you should stay off of your online shopping list until you're ready to test those waters. After all, there's no faster way to make sure you never order from a grocery delivery service than to order apples only to receive bruised, spotty fruit that you wouldn't have chosen had you actually gone to the store. The same applies for meat and seafood: if you're picky about the size and weight of the meat you buy, or how thickly your deli meats are sliced, you may have trouble giving up that control to an order picker who's responsible for filling a box with your order and putting it on the truck for delivery.
We're not saying you should never order these products from grocery delivery services. What we are saying is that you should probably hold off on them until you grow to know your delivery person, trust your delivery service, and fully understand your options to return products you're not happy with. In some cases, you may have to head into a grocery store to process an exchange. In other cases, you can just decline to accept that part of your order, and your delivery person will handle the exchange for you.
Still, if you know you'll never be happy unless you're the one squeezing the tomatoes in the produce section or you're a big fan of your local farmer's market or health food store, save the produce for a quick, personal trip, or beg a friend, neighbor, or family member to visit the store and choose wisely on your behalf. If the reason you're shopping for groceries online is because you'd rather put your time to better use, consider hiring a runner using a service like previously mentioned Fiverr to do the job for you.
Photo by Rick Audet.
How I Worked Grocery Delivery Into My Lifestyle
Personally, I rely on grocery delivery services like Safeway, Amazon, and Peapod (all happen to serve my area) to bring me paper products, dried goods, non-perishables, health and beauty products, and household products. I'm a CSA member (as I've mentioned before) and love my local farmer's market, so I tend to rely on those for my seasonal produce, dairy, meats, and cheeses. I love to cook and I love to eat, so it makes the trips to the farmer's market on the weekends much more fun when I know I don't have to hit a half-dozen grocery stores and deal with crowds of people just to pick up toilet paper and deodorant—I have that stuff delivered to me with an Amazon subscription, and I'll order cans of soup and dried pasta from Peapod. Then on the weekends, I can say hello to my favorite butcher at the farmer's market, get my knives sharpened, and tease him for cutting my steaks too thin.
Plus, my family lives a good three hour drive from me, and they're getting older and have more difficulty getting out of the house to do tedious chores like grocery shopping. The ability to order some of their household goods in bulk to be delivered to their home directly is something that brings me peace of mind and helps them spend more time relaxed and comfortable at home than fighting traffic and shopping carts in the aisles of their local supermarket.
Shopping for groceries online likely won't replace all of your trips to the grocery store, and if you're a food lover or have an eye for quality and like to pick your products carefully and try new things, it shouldn't. What it can do however is help you spend only the money you have to on the things that are essential, help you stick to a budget and plan your meals, and free you up to actually enjoy your food shopping tips, as opposed to dreading them.
Do you use an online grocery service? Which do you prefer, or are you still waiting for one to support your area? Share your shopping secrets in the comments below.
Photo by Seth Anderson.
You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at [email protected], or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+.
