Running a household, whether you’ve got a cozy little apartment, a so-called tiny house, or a sprawling multi-bedroom home can be time consuming. And there are always chores to do. Vacuuming, dusting, yard work, laundry, grocery shopping, the list seems to never end, and it can be a drag. I know that personally I really hate laundry. There’s something about the effort versus how quickly clothes just get dirty that’s most frustrating!
For a lot of people, however, it’s grocery shopping and keeping their pantry stocked that’s most annoying. Whether you shop at 10pm or 3pm, swing by the market on the way home from work or shop once every few weeks to save time, lots of people looking for a quicker, more convenient way to get their grocery shopping done.
Which is why it’s cool that Safeway is introducing Grocery Delivery Service, and it’s not only ridiculously easy, it’s fun too. I know because I gave it a whirl…
To start, just hit up shop.safeway.com (or use the mobile app if you prefer). On the Web site here’s the home page:
As a newly launched service, Safeway is going a bit bonkers with discount codes too. On the home page you can see EASY7 but they sent me an even better discount code to try out the service for the first time: TRYIT15 gives you $15 off your first order in addition to free delivery on all orders placed by Oct 2, 2016.
My first question upon learning about the delivery service was how much is delivery and what’s the minimum order (clearly you can’t just order a pint of Ben & Jerry’s at 3am and expect it be a $1 surcharge!)? Turns out it’s pretty easy: delivery is $6.95 on orders over $150 and $9.95 on orders under $150. But depending on your delivery window choice, you can drop $3 or even $6 off that charge, making even a relatively modest order just few bucks, cheaper than the gas you’d spend getting to the local market!
Shopping, however, is much less of a social watch everyone else in the store experience, and more like a database / online shopping perusal. To start, you pick an aisle:
Easy enough. I clicked through to breakfast and cereal to “peruse” the aisle, and found an item to add to my cart, Quaker Oatmeal Instant Variety Pack. What’s really great is that nutrition facts and a complete list of ingredients is only a click away. If you’re paying attention to what you eat, that’s a huge win over trying to decipher the labels on most product packages:
You can see here also that adding it to your cart is a breeze: Click “+” and “-” to specify the correct amount, then “Add“. I found that after a while using the search to find exactly what I wanted was ultimate more efficient. Once you’ve used the service once, you can also quickly access your previous orders to make refilling favorites even easier.
After hitting my $49 minimum purchase limit, I was prompted to choose a deliver window. There are 1-hour hand-off deliveries and the more affordable two hour or four hour windows (offering the discounts on deliver, as mentioned earlier):
I choose the 9-10am Sunday delivery window and was almost done.
One more step: If a product is out of stock or otherwise unavailable, what should the personal shopper do?
As it turned out they were out of stock on the organic navel oranges, and since I specified “No Substitutions” I ended up just not getting it (and not being charged for them, of course). You might prefer specifying that substitute brands or packaging sizes are acceptable, both are easy to do. One more mouse click to confirm the details of the order and I was done, email receipt dropped into my mailbox and all.
Just a minute or two after 10am on Sunday the Safeway delivery truck pulled up to my house and Kevin, the delivery driver, unloaded my order:
The truck’s pretty interesting because there are different temperature zones for the different types of food (and I did order some frozen food too). Pantry items were at room temperature, the fruit was chilled and the frozen food was, well, still frozen.
A signature to confirm delivery and I had five bags of groceries on my kitchen counter, ready to unpack:
That was it. Easiest shopping experience ever, and if you have a Safeway or Albertsons near you, the Web site and the app will work great, though you’ll need to check your zip code to ensure that you are covered by the delivery service. As for me? I kinda like grocery shopping, so this’ll be for when I’m really sick or so busy I just don’t have the time to hit up the market. Now if Safeway offered laundry services too…
Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Safeway; all opinions are my own.