There were times I wanted to curl up in a ball and weep at the thought of dragging four small children into a grocery store with me, and yet empty cupboards and a bare refrigerator will eventually motivate even the weakest willed mom to go to the store.
What I wouldn’t have given for online grocery shopping and curbside pickup when my kiddos were little!
Maybe online ordering and curbside pickup hasn’t come to your neck of the woods yet. If not, be patient: It’s coming. Grocery stores are learning there is a massive clientele willing to pay extra money to have someone do their shopping for them. It’s been an option in some urban areas for many years now. In my area it’s only been available for the last two or three, but once one store started doing it, it seemed all the others wanted to follow suit!
But maybe it’s in your area and you just haven’t given it a try yet. For whatever reason, I talked about doing my grocery shopping online for months before I ever actually tried it, but as soon as I did so, I wondered why on earth it took me so long!
So what are the benefits of it? Some of them are obvious I think, but let me tell you about them just the same, and then I’ll also share some of the drawbacks about such a service that you may want to consider.
**Just for perspective, I use Kroger Clicklist for my online shopping. There are other stores in the area that offer the same service, but Kroger’s is the only one I’ve used thus far. The fee for the service is $4.95, (worth every penny as far as I am concerned,) and it’s my understanding the fees charged by other stores are very similar. A Clicklist promotion charged no fee for my first two orders. Other stores will offer a certain dollar amount of free groceries when you use them for the first time.
I can grocery shop from my living room couch.
If anything should endear online grocery shopping to you, it should be this! I don’t have to go out in pouring rain, freezing temperatures, or a miserable heatwave, (except for the time spent in my heated/air-conditioned vehicle when I go for pickup,) to do my grocery shopping. I don’t have to iron clothes, fix hair, or drag children along with me since I never have to step foot out into public.
If I’m sick, I can still do my shopping. If the store is closed or it’s crowded, I can still do my shopping and schedule for pick up later. Then I drive up, call in, and they bring the groceries out and load them in my car for me. Except for home delivery, (which is also growing in availability and popularity,) how does it get much easier than that?
It saves me time.
A typical trip to the grocery store takes me about an hour and a half to complete. Sometimes longer. And I only live 5 minutes from my local Kroger. Shopping online takes some time, too, but the ordering system is designed to start recognizing your usual purchases and will quickly begin to start moving those items to the top of the page. It knows I buy things like milk and eggs and butter almost every time I shop, and so those things pop up quickly and are easy to access, meaning I often get at least 1/4 of my shopping done with just a quick glance over my regular purchases.
It makes for much faster shopping. Even on a day when I have lots of odds and ends to purchase and I have to type them in individually, I’m still maxing out at maybe 45 minutes to an hour of shopping time.
It saves me money!
No matter how disciplined you are, it’s easy to fall prey to the surprise promotions, clearance bins, and free sample tables you find inside the store. When you avoid going in, you actually save yourself from a lot of the temptation to buy items you don’t necessarily need or even want. The truth is, we often buy things just because they’re on sale or because we’re hungry or because we haven’t bought it in a while. Often, if we can avoid seeing it, we can save ourselves a lot of money.
Hey, when I started grocery shopping online I started comparing the receipts. By shopping online I was consistently saving $20-$30 per grocery trip. That’s a pretty significant savings!
As you can see, I’m a fan of online grocery shopping. But I would be remiss not to admit there are a few drawbacks you might want to consider, though I don’t personally think they should keep you from trying the service.
You don’t get to pick your own meat and produce.
I realize for some people, this may be a deal breaker.
Our town has an awesome butcher shop where I buy almost all of our meat, so I have to confess I haven’t had much experience with allowing someone else to do it for me. It’s possible I wouldn’t like it very much.
And I have had a few less-than-wonderful experiences with produce selection. Some of it I have learned I can prevent by adding very specific instructions to my list– you can add notes to your list when you do a final review of your order — but I’ve actually only been really dissatisfied maybe a couple of times. There are exceptions, of course, but most employees who are doing your shopping know a good apple when they see it the same as you do.
It takes a while to get the hang of it.
Grocery shopping online is easy and it saves time, but there is a learning curve involved. Just like with any other website, it can take a little bit for you to learn your way around your online shopping cart. It also takes a few times for the system to begin recognizing you regular purchases, and finding items one at a time can be a little slow at first.
It’s easy to make mistakes early on, too, like accidentally double-buying, or buying the right products in the wrong size because things look pretty much the same on the screen. You have to learn to be mindful of substitutions, too. Most grocery shopping services offer a substitute if the product you request is not available. It may be just fine with you if one brand of canned corn is substituted for another, but what about your oh-so-beloved peanut butter or the trash bags you insist are the only ones you’ll use? In those cases nothing but your preferred brand will do. You have to learn to pay close attention to details like these when grocery shopping online.
There may be things I miss because I’m not going inside the store.
As I said before, when it comes to saving money, there are actually benefits to being in the store less.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there are some things you remember to buy because you pass by them in the store. Sometimes something you see inside the grocery store inspires a new meal idea, or you may be introduced to a great new product, or you might come across sale or clearance items that are something you really need, just because you went inside the store.
I still think the benefits of not going in are greater than the benefits of doing so, but I had to acknowledge what you *might* miss out on by not going inside.
As far as I am concerned, there is no question about it: Online grocery shopping is so worth it! If you don’t have it in your area, I hope it comes to you soon! If you just haven’t got around to trying it yet, there’s no time like the present to start saving yourself some time and trouble, and money, too! Nothing beats the luxury of grocery shopping in my pajamas, coffee in hand, from the comfort of my couch…
