How do you do your weekly food shopping online?

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I know this sounds odd but exactly how do you use the system your supermarket provides for online shopping (whether it is delivered or you pick it up from the store)?

For instance, I always shop with a particular recipe in mind. So I might need aubergines, courgettes, red & green peppers and onions.

If I were to find that the aubergines or courgettes were not available, then all of the other ingredients are now redundant. In store, I'll just not pick them up in the first place. This recipe I've picked off the top of my head is ratatouille as an example.

Other times, I can substitute cauliflower with broccoli but I can't tell the app or website that and I don't want both.

So how do you deal with these issues? I don't want to be purchasing veg unnecessarily. It's a waste not only of money but of food as well. Some recipes I can just omit a single ingredient but not often and not usually, so I'm curious how people actually use the supermarket shopping app.

Other issues I've noticed are (using the shopping list option) that an item is often down as unavailable yet I know it won't be. The stock levels are updated every 2 hours in the one i use but my bread for example is always unavailable (both were this week, yet both were in store, on the shelf in their usual place, no issues. In fact in the 9 weeks since my husband has been off his feet, our bread has been unavailable the entire time, even whey searching afresh for it rather than using an old shopping list and every single time I've wanted it, it has been there for me to buy, but the app won't let me buy something that's unavailable. I've seen the opposite as well.

We also shop by both number of items e.g. 7 bananas and by ½kg field mushrooms or 3 large aubergine, again the system doesn't allow for this. 7 bananas are fine, but the shopping list view is only whole kg of things and when you try adding it to your basket it switches to number of pieces you want. But if the aubergine are small I'll need 4 for my recipe not 3.

So how do you get around these issues?
Remember for my instance, I can't accept substitutions because i can guarantee that another make of say light rye sliced bread is dairy free, so it has to be the one I order or not at all...

 

[Yorky]

We didn't really have local "on-line" grocery shopping. I provide a list for my wife.

The produce that I may require for a specific dish is bracketed together so if one item is missing she doesn't buy any of them (or will ring or message me to check).

Today's list is:

Biscuits
Potatoes
Chicken
Duck eggs
Bread stick
Grass
Cabbage
Tomatoes
Cooking oil (x2)
Dish washing liquid
Conditioner
Dog food

[In fact, she has just this minute rang me to ask do I want one or two packs of chicken, they are only 300gms]

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

We didn't really have local "on-line" grocery shopping. I provide a list for my wife.

The produce that I may require for a specific dish is bracketed together so if one item is missing she doesn't buy any of them (or will ring or message me to check).

Today's list is:

Biscuits
Potatoes
Chicken
Duck eggs
Bread stick
Grass
Cabbage
Tomatoes
Cooking oil (x2)
Dish washing liquid
Conditioner
Dog food

[In fact, she has just this minute rang me to ask do I want one or two packs of chicken, they are only 300gms]

We have a digital shopping list so I can update it or hubby can whilst the other one is driving to and from the store.
We get around issues like 3 aubergine only being in kg, by actually saying 3kg aubergine and us just knowing that's how we are using it. Plus the shopping list has a manually add option so we can write instructions if needed (or items for the other shops in the same shopping center) but my question was specially how to use supermarket delivery (either to home it to the boot of your vehicle) . Not something either you or I use or can get.

I can get it delivered to my boot if I drive there, but with so many issues in working out how to use the app, and not being able to accept substitutions, I fail to see the point at present

 

[TastyReuben]

Before I start on the specifics, you highlight the several reasons I still prefer to shop in-store for myself.

Bit of history: during covid, I had two home deliveries (through Instacrap…er, cart), and probably a dozen curbside, ordered through Kroger’s app.

In both scenarios, there’s a mechanism through the app, when building your list, to identify whether substitutions are permitted, and if so, what substitutions are acceptable.

Additionally, on the day of shopping, with Instacart, you get a text that says they’ve started your shopping trip, and you can message them back and forth during the trip.

The first Instacart shopper was very good about that, and messaged me several times with questions. The second one virtually ignored me.

Kroger does sort of the same thing, except it’s less personal. You’ll get a notice through the app that’ll say something like, “Super Sugar Bomb cereal is out of stock. Would Extreme Choco-Crunch Avalanche be acceptable?” and you can reply back with yes, no, or suggest something else.

You can also leave notes in the app with both, saying things like, “I’d like the bananas to be a little green,” or “Get four lemons instead of three if they’re small,” but obviously, the more picky or involved the instructions are, the less success you’ll have with those instructions being followed.

Of course, it does come down to the individual shopper. I’m fairly impressed with the ones at my local Kroger. It’s obvious they’ve been trained, and I watch them in the produce section, and I do see them exercising a least a little discretion in picking out the fruit and veg.

My nephew worked for Instacart for a while, and he laughed at the idea of any training with the shopper in mind. All their training was centered around getting in and out of the market as quickly as possible.

Another thing - Instacart is expensive. They mark up some items outright, there’s a service fee, a delivery fee, and an expected tip that can easily turn $40 of groceries into $75 in payment. Kroger’s curbside, during covid, was free, and before that, a flat $5 per trip. I don’t know what it is now.

 

[TastyReuben]

If I were to find that the aubergines or courgettes were not available, then all of the other ingredients are now redundant.

This happens whether I’m shopping or they’re shopping. What I usually do is figure I’ll just delay making that recipe by a few days, and get the missing item elsewhere.

In my town, I have three options for groceries: Kroger (mid-sized one), ALDI, and Walmart. If one is out of something, I’ll run up to one of the other ones.

Being a small town, there are some things I just can’t get here, so that waits for a weekend and a trip further afield, to bigger and better-stocked stores.

Yes, I get that that’s not your situation, since you’re specifically asking about curbside/delivery. When that happens with those shopping methods, I’d then turn right around in the following couple of days and go get it myself.

Not always successful, which then would find me scrambling to use the ingredients I did get for something else.

Other issues I've noticed are (using the shopping list option) that an item is often down as unavailable yet I know it won't be.

That happened to me once with Kroger. I was sitting in the parking lot, waiting for my order, I’d gotten the notice that they were out of something (cream cheese, maybe?) and as soon as they loaded me up, I walked right into the store and found it plainly on the shelf.

Annoying, but it’s humans doing the shopping, so mistakes will be made. I figure it’s payback for the literally hundreds of times I’ve looked for something, couldn’t find it, gotten help, and dragged an employee to the aisle, only to have them show me it was right where they said it was, at eye-level, right where I’d looked for it for 15 solid minutes before giving up and asking for help.

We also shop by both number of items e.g. 7 bananas and by ½kg field mushrooms or 3 large aubergine, again the system doesn't allow for this.

The Kroger app does let you specify numbers of certain things, like bananas, even though bananas are sold in bunches and by weight. They’ll list in the app as “approximately $.23/each,” or whatever they are.

Mushrooms are sold in preweighed quantities only. No loose mushrooms, not even at the specialty fancy-pants shop.

Remember for my instance, I can't accept substitutions because i can guarantee that another make of say light rye sliced bread is dairy free

I really feel for you, because for most people, all of this comes down to convenience, and if I were to gripe that the personal shopper who picked out, scanned, bagged, and delivered my groceries to my car got the wrong bread…well, I’m going to come across as a whiny, overprivileged jerk, but for you, that’s a very real concern.

 

[JAS_OH1]

Before I start on the specifics, you highlight the several reasons I still prefer to shop in-store for myself.

Bit of history: during covid, I had two home deliveries (through Instacrap…er, cart), and probably a dozen curbside, ordered through Kroger’s app.

In both scenarios, there’s a mechanism through the app, when building your list, to identify whether substitutions are permitted, and if so, what substitutions are acceptable.

Additionally, on the day of shopping, with Instacart, you get a text that says they’ve started your shopping trip, and you can message them back and forth during the trip.

The first Instacart shopper was very good about that, and messaged me several times with questions. The second one virtually ignored me.

Kroger does sort of the same thing, except it’s less personal. You’ll get a notice through the app that’ll say something like, “Super Sugar Bomb cereal is out of stock. Would Extreme Choco-Crunch Avalanche be acceptable?” and you can reply back with yes, no, or suggest something else.

You can also leave notes in the app with both, saying things like, “I’d like the bananas to be a little green,” or “Get four lemons instead of three if they’re small,” but obviously, the more picky or involved the instructions are, the less success you’ll have with those instructions being followed.

Of course, it does come down to the individual shopper. I’m fairly impressed with the ones at my local Kroger. It’s obvious they’ve been trained, and I watch them in the produce section, and I do see them exercising a least a little discretion in picking out the fruit and veg.

My nephew worked for Instacart for a while, and he laughed at the idea of any training with the shopper in mind. All their training was centered around getting in and out of the market as quickly as possible.

Another thing - Instacart is expensive. They mark up some items outright, there’s a service fee, a delivery fee, and an expected tip that can easily turn $40 of groceries into $75 in payment. Kroger’s curbside, during covid, was free, and before that, a flat $5 per trip. I don’t know what it is now.

I've never used Instacart and wouldn't ever use a service I had to pay for. I only used delivery service once from our local Acme Fresh Market because they were offering a free trial. They were 4 hours late so never bothered again.

Our Giant Eagle offers free curbside pickup and I order online. They have a feature for their online shoppers to send text messages. I will receive a text the morning of my pickup order stating something like, "Hello, I am Alicia. I will be your personal shopper today. If there is anything you would like to add to your list, please let me know!" And then a little later she might text me that they are out of something and send a photo of something else asking if I would like to substitute it. I always put in the notes "No substitutions" and also check the boxes for each item that indicates no substitutions, but it's their protocol to ask anyway and on one occasion I did say yes.

I don't shop the way most people do, I rarely have a particular recipe in mind when I am buying groceries. We just have certain things we eat regularly, so I have about 8 packs of bacon in the freezer, steaks, chicken (thighs and skinless boneless breasts), pork tenderloin, ground pork, ground beef, smoked salmon, scallops, ground lamb, and lots and lots of fish filets. I routinely buy quantities of eggs (right now I have 4 dozen in the fridge), cheese, cream, half and half, and an assortment of vegetables I consider staples: onions, garlic, mushrooms, jalapenos, tomatoes, potatoes, and multicolored bell peppers, plus whatever veggies are more seasonal, like fresh asparagus. We also have a bounty crop of lettuce growing right now, though I have to buy it in the winter. Pretty soon our tomatoes will be ripe on the plants outside so we won't have to buy any of those, either.Fruit is pretty typical--bananas and pineapple are standard and available year round, and also I tend to buy more fresh fruit in the summer such as strawberries, blackberries, etc.

I do some in person shopping these days. If something is out of stock on my order that I absolutely need, I only have to drive about 4 miles to another store to pick it up. Within 9 miles of my house there are 10 grocery stores and a farmers market.

 

[TastyReuben]

I don't shop the way most people do, I rarely have a particular recipe in mind when I am buying groceries.

One thing with me - when I menu-plan (which I’d gotten away from the last few months, but have tried to start up again), I throw away far less food. When I just shop for “that looks good,” “that’s on sale,” and “I can probably do something with that,” I throw out a lot more food, because I get it home, and then I don’t circle back around and figure out something to actually make with it, because in the meantime, I’ll see a recipe somewhere and think, “Ohhhhh, I want to make that right now,” and half that stuff I bought goes right out of my mind, and because we’re not that big on leftovers here anyway, we still end up tossing more food than most people, probably, especially since we don’t have kids/grandkids coming over for something to eat. It’s just us two.

 

[Morning Glory]

I shop exclusively on-line apart from (pre Covid) the very occasional visit to a specialist shop such as butchers or fishmongers. I'm probably one of the first people ever to shop all my food on-line in the UK, because as soon as it was introduced by Tesco's (back in 1996) I started using it all the time. So I've been doing on-line grocery shopping for 26 years! Blimey, I was only 44 then!

The thing is, that I don't plan menus or use recipes, so what I do is fill up the 'cart' with basics that I know regularly need - toilet roll, bread, potatoes, eggs, cheese, tinned tomatoes, bacon etc. The rest is really whatever takes my fancy or is in season. So, I don't have a particular method. The sites I use 'remember' my favourites which can be useful.

 

[TastyReuben]

The rest is really whatever takes my fancy or is in season.

Here’s a question for you:

With that mindset (whatever takes your fancy), that seems tailor-made for browsing, which to me would be much easier to do in person, and much more satisfying, because you can stroll up and down the aisles and see this or that item, and think, “I’ll have that!”

I find it incredibly difficult to “stroll” through a store’s website. It’s great when I know what I want, but terrible at just letting me wander, because when I’m shopping for whatever strikes me…I wouldn’t even know how to do that in an app or online, because I wouldn’t know ahead of time even a category of food that might interest me, without seeing it first. Does that make sense?

 

[JAS_OH1]

One thing with me - when I menu-plan (which I’d gotten away from the last few months, but have tried to start up again), I throw away far less food. When I just shop for “that looks good,” “that’s on sale,” and “I can probably do something with that,” I throw out a lot more food, because I get it home, and then I don’t circle back around and figure out something to actually make with it, because in the meantime, I’ll see a recipe somewhere and think, “Ohhhhh, I want to make that right now,” and half that stuff I bought goes right out of my mind, and because we’re not that big on leftovers here anyway, we still end up tossing more food than most people, probably, especially since we don’t have kids/grandkids coming over for something to eat. It’s just us two.

Yep, it's just us two the majority of the time as well, but we have a much different mindset. Not much goes to waste around here and I am fine with leftovers--often for breakfast. Just yesterday before work I ate a bowl of leftover fried rice for my breakfast. I had some pineapple chunks in the refrigerator that had been in there for awhile, and they still looked pretty good (I use pyrex and glass storage containers instead of plastic--food stays fresh much longer), but I was afraid it wouldn't get eaten so I put it in my mini food processor and pureed it to use for pineapple pancakes. It made 4 extra pancakes, but I am working early tomorrow so now breakfast is solved for hubby, who isn't like me and won't eat dinner foods for breakfast. Tonight we are having porterhouse steaks and salad, but we will only eat the filet mignon section of the steak, so the strip side will be turned into steak sandwiches tomorrow night, and the bones will go in the freezer for stock or to make a tomato-based meat pasta sauce.

 

[JAS_OH1]

Here’s a question for you:

With that mindset (whatever takes your fancy), that seems tailor-made for browsing, which to me would be much easier to do in person, and much more satisfying, because you can stroll up and down the aisles and see this or that item, and think, “I’ll have that!”

I find it incredibly difficult to “stroll” through a store’s website. It’s great when I know what I want, but terrible at just letting me wander, because when I’m shopping for whatever strikes me…I wouldn’t even know how to do that in an app or online, because I wouldn’t know ahead of time even a category of food that might interest me, without seeing it first. Does that make sense?

The amount of time I save shopping online gives me extra time to do my laundry and sew buttons on my shirts LOLOLOL! I am all about maximizing my time.

I must say that my job is extremely useful in that while I am working at a Meijer's (or other grocer) store, when I am finished with my task I can "stroll" past the butcher's service counter and the refrigerated meat bin and find some wonderful meats, then to the produce section and a quick checkout. While out working and I pass by Aldi's, I might stop in to get some of our staples that are always at a good price.

 

[Morning Glory]

I find it incredibly difficult to “stroll” through a store’s website. It’s great when I know what I want, but terrible at just letting me wander, because when I’m shopping for whatever strikes me…I wouldn’t even know how to do that in an app or online, because I wouldn’t know ahead of time even a category of food that might interest me, without seeing it first. Does that make sense?

I usually head for 'fresh vegetables' first because I eat mainly vegetarian. All the vegetables are displayed then and I can scroll through and see what I fancy. I'm doing this on a large screen (MacBook Pro) so I can see pretty large images of the produce. The site I use also displays 'in season' vegetables etc.

Here is how fresh vegetables are displayed (let me know if link doesn't work):
https://www.ocado.com/browse/fresh-chilled-food-20002/vegetables-44330

Then I might head for the fresh seafood section... there aren't hundreds of items there.

 

[JAS_OH1]

I usually head for 'fresh vegetables' first because I eat mainly vegetarian. All the vegetables are displayed then and I can scroll through and see what I fancy. I'm doing this on a large screen (MacBook Pro) so I can see pretty large images of the produce. The site I use also displays 'in season' vegetables etc.

Here is how fresh vegetables are displayed (let me know if link doesn't work):
https://www.ocado.com/browse/fresh-chilled-food-20002/vegetables-44330

Then I might head for the fresh seafood section... there aren't hundreds of items there.

That's a similar layout to my grocery store's webpage. I usually toggle to the sales flyer view.

Grocery - Giant Eagle

 

[TastyReuben]

Not much goes to waste around here and I am fine with leftovers

MrsT is so against leftovers…let’s say I cook some chicken breast and make chicken Alfredo (sorry, karadekoolaid, ), she won’t want chicken fried rice the next night; “We just had chicken!”

All the vegetables are displayed then and I can scroll through and see what I fancy.

That’s almost exactly how Kroger displays theirs - a running list to scroll through.

The problem is, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of items to scroll through. That would take me an hour or more (I know, I’ve done it), because you’ve got to scroll by red grapes, green grapes, black grapes, cotton candy grapes, bubble gum grapes, and any other specialty grape they happen to have.

In the store…I can survey the whole of the fruit & veg section in just a few minutes, because I know I don’t need to go over to the section where the precut fruit and veg are, and I know I don’t need to go look at the washed-and-ready-to-eat greens and salad kits are, and I know I don’t have to go over to where the “exotic” stuff is, because I know from experience I’m not going to buy that stuff.

I have to scroll by all that in the app, and the app doesn’t sort it beyond “Produce,” so I’ll see grapes, then dragonfruit, then potatoes, then more grapes, then organic onions, then a pineapple, etc. If I want to see just the grapes, I have to search on grapes, then filter it down to fresh produce.

In the amount of time it takes me to do that for the areas I like, I could be done with the whole department in person.

I can have a wander through the root veg, and see that, “Oh, look, they’ve got purple potatoes this week,” and grab some, and have no need to be forced to walk through and look at the prebagged citrus (that’s the in-person version of scrolling). In the app, I’d have to scroll through the entirety of their offerings to see everything in a single department.

 

[JAS_OH1]

MrsT is so against leftovers…let’s say I cook some chicken breast and make chicken Alfredo (sorry, karadekoolaid, ), she won’t want chicken fried rice the next night; “We just had chicken!”


That’s almost exactly how Kroger displays theirs - a running list to scroll through.

The problem is, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of items to scroll through. That would take me an hour or more (I know, I’ve done it), because you’ve got to scroll by red grapes, green grapes, black grapes, cotton candy grapes, bubble gum grapes, and any other specialty grape they happen to have.

In the store…I can survey the whole of the fruit & veg section in just a few minutes, because I know I don’t need to go over to the section where the precut fruit and veg are, and I know I don’t need to go look at the washed-and-ready-to-eat greens and salad kits are, and I know I don’t have to go over to where the “exotic” stuff is, because I know from experience I’m not going to buy that stuff.

I have to scroll by all that in the app, and the app doesn’t sort it beyond “Produce,” so I’ll see grapes, then dragonfruit, then potatoes, then more grapes, then organic onions, then a pineapple, etc. If I want to see just the grapes, I have to search on grapes, then filter it down to fresh produce.

In the amount of time it takes me to do that for the areas I like, I could be done with the whole department in person.

I can have a wander through the root veg, and see that, “Oh, look, they’ve got purple potatoes this week,” and grab some, and have no need to be forced to walk through and look at the prebagged citrus (that’s the in-person version of scrolling). In the app, I’d have to scroll through the entirety of their offerings to see everything in a single department.

There isn't a search feature? Also, you have to spend time driving there and back and standing in the checkout queue. It's so much simpler to just sit around drinking coffee, tea, or even a beer and cocktail and perusing onlne.