Will this be the grocery store of the future?

[clovishound]

The wife, the Pup and I have been down with covid for the last week and a half. I'm about over it, hopefully the Pup only has a few days more, and my wife got it 3 to 4 days after we did. Anyway, rather than limit our diet to hard staples, we tried Amazon grocery delivery to get us by for a few days until I am OK to go out. The Pup did the ordering, but apparently they have a somewhat limited selection available for next day delivery, but seem to have most things you need, including things like lunchmeat, bread, fresh fruits and vegetables. We ordered last night around 8:30 and it was delivered early this morning. One interesting item. To keep the cold stuff cold, they put a few frozen water bottles in the insulated bags. I do that with coolers, rather than messing with melting ice, or cold packs. It is the first I have seen that done in a commercial setting.

I'm not looking to switch over to this for my normal grocery shopping, but it's nice to have that option if needed. The fruits and vegetables were decent quality, from what I could tell. Prices were comparable to most stores. There was no delivery charge with a $25 minimum order. The only down side we had was a small bag of sweet potatoes got put on top of the bread. It didn't ruin the bread, but the sandwiches will be a little shorter than normal. Heck, I've had that happen at the local brick and mortar stores.

I doubt this service is available in all areas, but thought it might be of interest to some of you.

[Sir Henry]

I was looking into it for things like peanut butter. What I’ve experienced is they send the junk to rural areas as I have to drive 60 miles to return it. I only recommend it if you are in an Amazon truck delivery zone. I’m not. Every thing comes UPS.

[CT_Shooter]

I purchase food from Amazon regularly and, since I have a Prime membership, shipping is free and delivery is usually the next day. I just ordered four pounds of granulated sugar for $3.07 delivered. The IGA store-brand at my local supermarket charges $4.99 for four pounds. I buy cat food, paper products, coffee, canned goods, household cleaners, and so much more that I used to load into a grocery cart. On the rare occasion when something has arrived damaged, they have always sent an immediate replacement and instructed me to discard the damaged goods. I'm not a fan of Jeff Bezos, not by a long stretch, but I shop at Amazon a lot.

[Mags]

Most of our grocery shopping is done online. We've done so since Covid.

Most groceriy shopping is done online at the local grocery store website. In-store employees do the shopping an bring them out to the car at our appointed time. Unfortunately, they give out crap for fresh produce, so we do in-store shopping elsewhere ourselves for that (Market of Choice).

Somethings we can't get, we buy from Amazon or other websites.
Meat, we buy online from 44-Farms. Comes packed in dry-ice in a styrofoam cooler. I have lots of styrofoam coolers laying around from those shipments.
Flour, we buy online from a place in Italy.

We use Costco home delivery maybe monthly.

Safeway, a regional grocery store, has home delivery, but we don't shop there.

[Sir Henry]

At any given time I usually have something ordered from Amazon/ebay. Delivery takes a week to ten days and comes UPS. It sure beats driving 50 miles one way. At least I’m only 30 miles from groceries, 20 from a latte and 15 from a gallon of milk. If I ever move again it’s going to be in walking distance of a Kwik Trip.

[daytime dave]

I don't live in an area that will deliver same day Amazon groceries. We have a fairly well stocked small grocery store in the nearest village. It's a bit higher, but close by and they seem to try harder. There is a produce market about ten miles away that can't be beat. Our main grocery shopping usually comes from a German chain called Aldi. It's inexpensive, with good quality items. There is an Aldi's near camp also. I often see an Aldi employee filling someone's shopping order and then it's wheeled out to them when they arrive. I guess that's a hold over from the covid days. I get my own groceries.
Amazon is delivered via UPS at camp.
I get some things from Amazon and some from Costco. I try not to drive to Costco as you always get more than you came for in person.

[Sir Henry]

Costco, do you really need to buy Whoopers in a 55 gallon drum?

[daytime dave]

I get paper towels, toilet paper and odds and ends from them. Two day shipping usually via FedEx. The extra it costs to go through the on line price makes up for not having to drive there and back. Plus, when you see that 55 gallon drum of whatever, that usually ends up in the cart too. I think they put something in the air when you walk in. You want everything when there in person.

[Hatchdog]

We have a really nice grocery store here in Deer Park called Yokes. It’s a locally owned company with stores in the Spokane and Coeur d’alene Idaho area. Great produce and meat departments. Prices are the same as the bigger chains like Albertsons. We make a monthly trip to Costco and limit our purchases to specific items like coffee and paper products. That is until my wife hits the clothing dept and I wander thru the home and garden areas.

We haven’t done any online grocery shopping as like mentioned above we have a great store 3 miles away. I do know that when we go to Walmart we get very annoyed with the employees doing the online order picking. Their racks of bins are too wide for the aisles and make it difficult to get by.

[dave77]

I don't do online grocery shopping. I'd have to make a shopping list and my routine is to just go down all the aisles and grab what I want and need and hope I don't forget anything I really need as I only want to shop once a week. I switch weekly between Fred Myers and Zipco with a trip to Costco about once a month.

The only thing I hate more than grocery shopping is shopping for clothing. Got it down to ordering my shorts from Walmart, getting my t-shirts, socks and underwear from Costco and I know my sizes for all those items so that mostly leaves having to shop for shoes which I absolutely hate. I have bad feet from my motorcycle accident so I have to try them on. Needed a new pair of casual slip-ons so I just spent about 6 hours at 3 different stores to finally find a pair I liked.

Most everything else I can get at Amazon or Lowes/Home Depot (which I actually don't mind shopping at).