A recent article in the StarTribune announcing Target’s plans to make home grocery delivery available soon in the Twin Cities came to mind while I was mulling a grocery run this past weekend. I’d been interested in home grocery delivery services for many years. My brother-in-law was having a lot of trouble with his artificial hip. This meant my sister had to keep close to home to care for him, so her trips to the grocery store usually had to include enough food for a couple of weeks. I naturally started to think she might benefit from such services. The problem was that she’s a computer-phobe, so I’ve never broached the topic with her. However, due to my recent heart attack, I find that I could use the service for myself. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was easily and quickly exhausted.
In the first month after coming back home from the hospital, I made two shopping trips to Target. Although they were taxing, they weren’t terrible ordeals, but I was in such a hurry to get it over with that I rushed through my shopping list and if I didn’t find exactly what I wanted, instead of browsing through the available choices, I just skipped to my next item. Hardly a satisfactory situation. My endurance has now returned, so I could do a major shop, but my loathing of Minnesota winters has kept me backfilling my pantry with trips to Walgreens. I’ve been subsisting on Walgreens’ offerings for the past few years, then raiding my sister’s kitchen on weekends to fill in the gaps.
Last week I’d been planning to make a trip to Cub. My cupboard was nearly bare and I’ve been feeling very strong, so I steeled myself to the idea of going out Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, I got hung up with work and couldn’t go out. So, Saturday morning arrived and I’m hearing about this impending major snowstorm – Wretch! In an unusual fit of determination, I decided to indulge myself and try shopping online. I went on Cub’s website and followed the links through the sign-up procedure and on to the actual shopping section.
The biggest problem with shopping online for groceries has to be the sheer number of items that the store has to make available to you. It makes wading through the lists of items go very slowly. They make it worse by listing every variety of each item separately. It would be much more convenient if they would make choosing varieties available as a drop-down menu the way you can select a color on a piece of clothing. For example, they could show Weight Watchers frozen meals as a single item and give you a choice of “Orange Chicken” or “Meatloaf” in a drop-down. I suspect that Cub is forced into the current arrangement by Instacart, which is the company that provides the service to Cub and many other retailers. My shopping list was pretty short since I live alone. Shopping this way for a family would take a good deal of patience and determination. In any case, I completed my shopping and had no problems with the checkout process. I shopped at about 7AM, but the earliest delivery time available was 2PM.
At about 1:30PM, I got a text message stating that “Edna” had started to do my shopping. Thereafter, I received about 6 more texts informing me that Edna had to make a substitution for an item I’d ordered. I wasn’t ordering anything exotic, so I was a little surprised that so many substitutions were made. The good news is that when it was simply a case of a different brand of the same size, I was only charged the price of my original choice. That included sale prices. However, on two items, the large size I wanted wasn’t available and I had to settle for a smaller size package that carried a higher per-unit price. It’s Cub, so the difference wasn’t much, but it’s something you have to get used to with home grocery shopping. It’s not a conventional E-Commerce site tied into the retailer’s inventory. It’s just a menu of offerings that they usually carry with no guarantee that the item is in stock at any given time.
The delivery man (where’s Edna?) arrived at my front door at 2:30, and had everything well-packed. The snow hadn’t started to fall yet, but I was glad to tip the guy for his help and patience with my leaving him standing on my front steps handing me the grocery bags one-by-one as I stacked them in my foyer. The “shoppers” are gig workers who work like Uber drivers – independent contractors who get paid a small flat fee for each delivery. Instacart gives you an opportunity to send them a tip online once the delivery has been made.
Overall, I’d call the experience a success. If I had a regular 9-to-5 job, I could see how many people would use home grocery shopping services regularly. The approximately $25.00 in fees and tips doesn’t look like that much when you weigh it against taking time out of your weekend. And if you start to use the service frequently, Instacart offers free deliveries on orders over $35.00 for $15.00 per month or $149.99 per year, and it includes all of the retailers they support like Cub Foods, Petco, Total Wine, Whole Foods, Costco, CVS Pharmacy, and more. No extra fees for peak hour deliveries, there are always lots of coupons, and you can still use all of your loyalty cards, too.