Have you ever wondered what it would be like to order your groceries online?  Well, let me tell you!

Back in February due to my broken foot, I was not able to do the grocery shopping, or walk, or drive, or do much of anything for that matter.  Thankfully, Josh was Super Husband and stepped up to the plate beautifully.  However, he realized that it would be worth his time (the 4+ hours it takes him to go grocery shopping) and money (the store's $13 gathering/delivery fee) for us to try online grocery shopping.

Little things to note: Strange but true, I am not a big fan of shopping on the internet.  I actually enjoy going to the store to buy things and I especially like grocery shopping.  Strange but true, I am not a coupon goddess, or a drive-around-forever-and-find-the-best-deal kind of goddess, but I am a hardcore Fareway girl (an economical food store here in our area) and I love staying in budget with my groceries.  The only grocery store with online shopping in our area is the more expensive grocery store and shopping there I inevitably spend one and a half to two times as much.

"Me" preferences aside, this is how it really went...

Negatives:

- Not every item in the store was on the website.
They tell you this before you get started so you are prepared.  For the most part everything major is there in some brand.  More specific brands / items were missing to varying degrees: various organic aisle items, fresh bakery items, fresh meats / fish, as well as random on sale items and larger varieties of different items like cereals or breads, etc.

- You have to know your ingredients.
Because you can't very easily check the "Nutrition Facts" on the back, you have to be very familiar with the items you purchase.  It is easy when you stick with your regular meals, but if you want to add in an item you don't buy that often or never, you just have to hope for the best at the nutritional content.

- You are at the mercy of the store employee & their thoughtfulness.
Even though the list is fairly detailed, mistakes were made every week, generally 3 each time.  Not that they were bad mistakes simply inconvenient, like 2 - 32oz bags of shredded cheese instead of 2 - 16oz blocks of cheese that were on sale.  (Disclaimer: I was just so happy to have groceries & Josh was so happy not to have gone grocery shopping, that we didn't mind.)  Some weeks items would be out and this is where the thoughtfulness of the store employee would determine your fate: either they would just skip it and you'd have to live without your half gallon of Organic Valley milk OR they would actually call you and suggest a substitute 1/2 gallon of another brand of milk.  (The ones who called were definitely a positive!)

- The website is painful.
It only runs on a painful browser and it chunk-chunk-chunks along.  So slow and so painful, so mixed up and so painful.  (Probably more for me since building websites is our business and oh, how I wanted to send them an email and ask them if they would hire us to rebuild their site!)

Positives:

- Saved grocery list
The website actually saves your info from week to week, so the items you regularly buy are already on your previous week's list and you can simply click on them to add again.  This also made using their website faster as you didn't have to always refind an item on their (painfully slow) in site search engine.

- No missed items on my end
Employee mistakes aside, I would come back to my order throughout the morning and make sure I didn't forget anything before the 11AM deadline.  Coming back to my order on the computer was much easier than shuffling the kids back and forth between aisles.

- Online ads from participating store
One big perk to the more expensive grocery store, was they always had their ad online.  While doing my shopping I could switch between websites and specifically buy things on sale (as long as I could find them on the shopping website).  Even if the price was not correct online, it always rung up correct in the store.

- The thoughtful employees
I used this system for about 4 months total, or 16 weeks.  About a third of the time I had the employee call to ask about a substitute or actually offer an on sale item as a substitute (generally the item that I had initially wanted to buy but it did not show up on their website).  And every week, the delivery person was incredibly kind!

- Paying by check
Instead of paying online, I would always pay by check.  I was not sure about trusting the chunk-chunk-chunk site with my credit card info and while I am sure it would've worked out, it was always nice for me to see that the total was always $15-20 less than expected (yet another reason why I didn't mind the mistakes as much).

- Soooooo great when needed!
All the negatives aside, it was so nice to be able to still do "something."  It was also so nice to simply do it when convenient for me, have it ordered by 11AM and at 4PM have a friendly clerk bring the groceries in my house and straight to the kitchen table.  Seriously worth the $13 gather/delivery fee!

Overall, I would say it was a good experience (for us) shopping online, one that I would recommend to someone if asked (tho' I would warn of the negatives).  However, because of the initial mentioned "me" preferences, I have not gone back to shopping online since I was given permission to walk and drive.  I know it is there if I need it but for now I am happy to enjoy walking the aisles again, even the back and forth... and back and forth... and back...