Doing Grocery Shopping in my PJ’s is the best thing ever!

04/13/2016

I don’t know about you but I hate grocery shopping!  I especially hate it when I have to bring my kids in tow to the grocery store and hear them whining and fighting about anything and everything.  Then just the headache of going there, walking around pushing the heavy carts, maneouvering around people, being bombarded with “deals” which cause you to get caught up in impulse buying and deviate from your “list”, standing in line at the cash, and just the time spent to do it all.  It really is exhausting and not the way I like to spend my day.   UNTIL NOW!  I recently tried out a “Click n’ Collect” grocery service at a large supermarket chain near me and I have to say it has made grocery shopping such an enjoyable experience!  So much that I want to tell everyone about it!

It really was so easy.  I pulled up their website, went to their online shopping portal and was able to search for and choose the items on my grocery list with a few easy clicks adding them to my “cart” as I went!  Once I had all the items in my online “cart”, I was able to easily pay for my order and print a receipt.  I was able to pick the closest store location to me and choose a pick up time (the following day).  Then I just drove over to the store at my pick up time with my kids in the back (who were sleeping when I got to the store…. how glorious!), parked in the designated parking spots for online orders and then the magic happened. They have signs saying when you arrive to call the number on the sign.  Someone answered right away, asked me for my order information etc.. and voila.  They were coming out of the store a few minutes later with my groceries, had me confirm my order on a handheld device and sign to accept.  That’s it! Then even loaded them into the car for me. It was so quick, so convenient and so relaxing!  All while the kids slept in the back.  No more dragging cranky kids out of the car to do your shopping after they fall asleep in the 5 minute drive to the grocery store.

Now there ARE a few disadvantages…but none that would deter me from doing this again.

If you aren’t as tech savvy, the first time you do it, it might take a bit of time to find and enter everything on your shopping list and put it in your “cart”.  Even if you ARE tech savvy, it still takes some time to go through the website, scroll through pages of items if you can’t find it by doing a search in the search field, and finalizing your order.   BUT you ARE doing all of this from the comfort of your own home in your PJ’s so hey gotta love that!

If you forget to buy things you need and you’ve already confirmed your order you can’t edit it once it’s processed and may have to go into a store anyways to pick up the few other items you missed. Or if you need things right away and don’t like waiting, this may not be for you.  You enter your order and pick it up the following day, not same day.  Although if you are entering an order between 12:00 am and 1:30 am you can pick up the same day for those night owls who are up at that time of night and feel inclined to do your shopping order then!

If you are super OCD about picking out your product, meats, etc, you may be hesitant to have someone else pick out these items for you.. BUT in my experience all the product and meat I purchased were perfect, no blemishes or brown spots. I really couldn’t have picked them better myself so I was pleasantly surprised about that.

The other annoying thing was that when I pulled into the parking lot to the designated parking for online orders… there were only 4 spots, only one that was open for me to pull into.  My initial thought was cool –  this must be a popular service and people are using it – well – that may very well be but at the time that I was there, three of the spots that are supposed to be for us “click n collecters” were being taken by regular customers going into the store to shop.  I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they 1) didn’t see the clearly labeled signs that it was for online orders or b) might have mistaken them for the handicap parking spots since they were situated close to the door.  or c)  didn’t understand what the signs meant?  I did mention this annoyance to the grocery guy that came to my car and he said he would bring it up with his management.  It IS a new service so perhaps as more and more people start understanding and realizing what the spots are for – they won’t park there!

All in all this was a great experience, super easy and took a ton of stress out of my life even if only for one day!  I would do this again in a heartbeat.. in fact.. I’m placing my next order tomorrow for the weekend.  Who wants to fight the crowds at the grocery store on a weekend?  Not this girl!  All I can say is Give it a try!  It will become your new favourite thing!