I am taking this social distancing thing seriously. But that means getting food in the house is a challenge. I’m not really concerned about the amount of time it would take me to shop in these current times, with lines and limitations on the number of people allowed in a store at a time. But I would really like to remain outside of COVID-19’s chain of transmission for a while. Not to bring it home. Not to pass it on to multiple other people. So, I have taken to the interwebz to find delivery service and/or curbside pickup service options for my nearby grocery stores. It’s not as simple as I thought.
In-store inventories are low, though continually being restocked. So, even if I am able to find an item in a specific store, it may not be on the shelf when my real-life-shopper-hero goes to find it. So there will be items substituted for the ones I wanted; some of which I get to pick, some I just have to live with. Different grocery stores, even of the same chain, carry different items. So, I have had to search individual stores to find specific items.
The bigger challenge has been finding a delivery window or curbside pickup window. Most of the stores and services I have looked at in my busy corner of Austin have either no open windows at all, or the first ones are a week to 10 days out. So I’ve had to be patient and persistent. And, I have taken to placing an order ahead of time for each week and it is working ok for now. Once an order is in the queue, I can add a few last-minute items to it before it is fulfilled.
I am using a combination of Shipt.com’s delivery service, from HEB, and HEB curbside pickup. I’ve been happy with both. Target also offers drive-up (in their parking lot) delivery, which has to be initiated from their app, not the target.com website. I haven’t tried it yet.
Wine and beer aren’t being delivered by most grocery stores, as that would require interacting with the delivery person to check the recipient’s ID, and the delivery companies are really trying to make each delivery interaction-free to keep their employees safer. So I wanted to find an alternative source that would deliver alcohol to the house as well. Solution: Costco delivery! Thanks for the tip, Lori 🙂 Costco uses Instacart.com for their same-day deliveries. I had to wait a day and a half for any delivery window at all to appear, but one eventually did this morning. It is 5 days away, and I grabbed it.
There have been a couple of food items that have been extremely hard to locate, but I stumbled upon Amazon.com’s Amazon Fresh store online, available for Prime members. Yesterday I ordered found a couple of items I haven’t located anywhere else, and they were delivered within 2 hours!
I know I am one of the fortunate ones to be able to afford this luxury. And I am thankful for that. I hope my using the service and tipping well helps the workers on the front lines. My goal is to try to avoid placing a MEGA grocery order for things I really don’t need right now. And, rather, place several small orders, spaced out over the next few weeks to get only things we need, leaving the rest in the store for others to buy.
Shop on! And be well.
P.S. I just love HEB. They are more than a grocery chain to Texans. They are integrated into their communities across the state, especially in times of disaster, be it a hurricane, mass-shooting, or pandemic. Their motto is “No store does more than HEB.” That is the truth. Here is a great article on their preparations for the times in which we find ourselves: https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/
Sheila365 