Online Grocery Shopping: Saving a Packet, or A Total Racket?

Posted by NessWorld on Jan 18, 2010 in Lifestyle, WAHM | 5 comments

This week I decided to try online shopping. For groceries rather than the kind of items that one would usually shop for online, i.e. dvd’s cd’s etc.

With both kids home during the school holidays, the idea of loading up the car with all assorted paraphernalia simply to pop to the shops for groceries, having to wrangle them both into a trolley and then having no space left to actually put stuff, *really* didn’t appeal to me.

You know what I mean right?

So I thought I would give one of our local stores the benefit of trying out their online shopping facility.

The website in question was easy to use, and fast to figure out the navigation, and I was able to get my shopping fairly quickly.

The whole process really opened my eyes to the possibilities and pitfalls of the concept and I thought that sharing my experience might help others avoid the potholes on the virtual  super highway.

Whether or not you choose to shop for groceries and basic necessities online, boils down to what you find more valuable to you.

Time vs Money

This is the question you should ask yourself:

If you are able to save an hour by shopping online, is that one hour more valuable to you, in terms of using the time to earn money by working on a project (if you’re a WAHM), than if you were to down tools, and go directly to the store to save money by finding bargains and specials that are not online. Consider everything right down to the gas/petrol required to get to the store, the distance travelled, the energy expended etc.

Here are some other pointers that can help you to improve your time management and cost saving ratio as well as some other interesting facts about doing grocery shopping online.

• Make a Menu Plan: Do not deviate from that plan. Download our handy meal planner to help you plan out a weeks meals in advance. It can be used in both Excel or Open Office, and is fully customizable and free.
• Shops with a List: From now on that is your Indian name. Make a list for groceries, based solely on your meal planner (did you download it yet?) and on any additional cleaning materials, other household items you may need. Ladies, chocolate is not a necessary household item, nor can it be categorized under ‘cleaning materials’, no matter how much you’d like it to.
• Do not browse: Browsing unnecessarily leads to spending unnecessarily. Yes the boxes are pretty. Yes the pictures are colourful, but IGNORE them. You have a list. You are “Shops with a List” remember?
• Environmentally Friendly:  Consider that if 20 people shop online, that would otherwise have driven cars to the store, you are actually saving some bad emissions from being released into the air. Yes, the delivery guy still has to drive to your house, but take one car versus twenty? Basic math says you’re helping the environment.
• Temptation Not:  You won’t be tempted by the freshly baked cinnamon rolls and coffee if you can’t smell them right?

The Down Side: There is also a down side of course, and by shopping online, you will not be able to see any specials that are only available in store. Items that might have been marked down are not listed on online grocery store sites, so where you could save quite a bit by buying bananas that are ripe right now, and needing to be sold immediately at rock bottom prices.

• Premium Only:  Sometimes when you shop online at a big online retailer for groceries, all orders are received at a centralized depot, and very often they will only carry the premium brand version of the product that you are looking for. So where at your local store you may have as many as three to four different brands of nappies available to choose from, they may only carry the most expensive premium brand. Ditto Olive Oil. Ditto Chocolate. But chocolate wasn’t on your list though right?
• Expiry Dates: My online retailer has a feature which allows me to send a note to the ‘personal shopper’ who will be picking out the products for me. I use this to instruct them to please select the item that has the expiry date as far in the future as possible i.e. milk/bread/meat.  Failure to do that, results in the products I’m ordering to be expiring within a day or two of them being delivered. Fact.
• Package Sizes: This again, is probably not the same at each retailer, but watch the package sizes carefully. You may be buzzing to discover this amazing bargan! Then when you receive it, you realise that it’s because you ordered the 100g bag instead of the 250g bag. If you aren’t there in person, at least read the fine print.
• Bulk Bargains: Be aware of the bulk bargain trap. Buying the larger item in order to save money, isn’t always cheaper! Make sure you work out the difference in price per pound/kilo/gram before selecting the bulk option. Fact.
• Local Products: This is a thorny issue as we all have it drummed into us that we should buy local products. I understand why. But I do not endorse this when the premium foreign brand is double the quality of the local one, and half the price. Fact. Yes, I’m talking about Tate & Lyle Demerara Sugar Cubes (ZAR 17.99) vs Hulettes Brown Sugar Cubes (R34.99). There is JUST no excuse for this sort of pricing, carbon foot print or not. If local brands want to compete, they’d better do so on equal footing. Charging double the price and hoping to guilt us into buying it will NOT fly with me or any of the other consumers I know.

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1. Free Resources for WAHMs: Transacting Online