Grocery Delivery Review

I hemmed and hawed for a bit about signing up for grocery delivery, but after a horrendous outing to the grocery store last weekend (the Husband commented that he could hear Ben's shrieks from across the store), I decided to give it a try. I spent several days making my list online, looking at weekly specials and finding coupons online, and then placed my order. Delivery was scheduled for Saturday between 12 and 2, and at about 1:30, I heard the truck in the driveway. I grabbed my stack of coupons, and went out to greet the driver. He gave me my invoice to sign, and he brought all the bags of groceries into the house for me. And that was it! I unloaded the groceries -- and the time that lapsed between the truck's arrival and the groceries being fully unloaded was about 20 minutes. It was fabulous.

I worried about a number of things. For example, I like picking out produce, and I was worried that the produce in the delivery would be past peak, or items that no shopper would pick out for herself. I was certainly wrong about this. I ordered strawberries (on sale, obviously), avocados, a bag of apples, and bananas. The produce was all great, and looked better than the produce on the shelves, especially for winter in New England. Several bananas were slightly bruised, but that could have been from my mishandling of a few bags.

I also worried about the meat. I ordered chicken breasts, a beef roast, and turkey ham steaks (also on sale). The roast was perhaps a bit fattier than a roast that I would have picked for myself, but it could have been the cut of meat (which was also on sale, and I have a tendency of using non-roast meats in the crock pot for the boys because animal fat grosses me out).

I love coupons. I am an avid coupon clipper, although I often don't use the coupons because it often cheaper to buy generic -- and there are not a ton of generic options on the grocery delivery site. That being said, I searched online and found coupons for nearly all the name brand products I was purchasing, which brought them to a generic-price, especially because the grocery delivery doubles coupons, up to $1.

I have free delivery for the next 60 days, and after that, delivery is $6.95 for orders over $100. I also tipped the driver $5 -- I figured I would tip someone who brought a pizza to my house, so I should tip the delivery guy, right? I will be interested to see the final price of the groceries -- I think that I got all the groceries we will need for the week -- and I had a $10 welcome coupon code, a $5 discount for signing up for "direct check" payment, a $1 coupon for using my checking account to pay, and then over $10 in manufacturers coupons. I am guessing the total price will be about $135, including tip. I am hoping that the grocery delivery will help me stick to a budget, and also help me be more organized, as I will have to plan meals in advance and decide exactly what we're going to have for dinner and lunches well in advance.

I did learn that I need to reserve the "good times" in advance -- and your cart has to have a minimum of $60 to checkout. Certain delivery times have discounts attached, and I have no problem with waiting for grocery delivery between 6 and 10pm on a Friday night! The website allows you to change the contents of the shopping cart until the day before delivery, so in the future, I will just put 60 rolls of paper towels in my cart or something so I can reserve the time!

All in all, I think that the grocery delivery will be a good time management tool for me, as it will take away another chore that would need to be accomplished each weekend, and also help me plan our meals in advance and stay on budget. If this post has persuaded you to try peapod, email me and if you use my email as the "refer a friend," we'll each get $10 coupon codes!

** As you can see, we're all finding this new schedule exhausting! **