Why Click & Collect Groceries is a Game Changer

If you have read some of my other posts, you may have gotten the impression that I do not enjoy grocery shopping. If you have, then you would be correct. I like to think I am a reasonable calm and collected individual. Employers in the past have praised how I am always able to keep a level head and exude a calm aura.

Few things frustrate me more than shopping at grocery stores. Usually I make the mistake of going at peak hours which is never a good decision. I could write an essay on everything I hate about grocery shopping but I’m sure you would not enjoy that. Instead here are my highlights which you can easily skip over:

• Parking
• Carts in parking spots
• People who moozy on through the automatic doors
• People who stop for no apparent reason in automatic doors
• When certain people decide to randomly walk away from their carts leaving them in the middle of the produce aisle
• When we have waited in line for 10 minutes at the deli and the person in front of me finally gets their turn and they have no idea what they want
• The people who seem to gaze at the shelves trying to find the hidden meaning in the arrangement of the cans while their cart is parked diagonally across the aisle
• The people who stop to have conversations with their friends in the middle of the aisle while they both have carts
• Why tacos are not in the ethnic/international aisle but the chip aisle
• Its Saturday morning and its rush hour, why do you have a sample table with an attendant blocking one of the main flows of traffic in the store
• The person who has to knock or listen to every vegetable to find the best one
• The abnormally short conveyor belts that only fit ⅛ of my groceries at a time
• The guy who gets into the express lane with fifty items
• The person who can’t seem to figure out self checkout
• When you wait to checkout in the only line for 20 minutes and then it’s your turn and someone opens another lane.
• When you have one item and are in a rush and the person in front of you at checkout decides they want to be best friends with the cashier and hear their life story
• People paying with exact pocket change

Thank you dear readers for being my therapy session. I don’t actively hate the grocery store but I would just rather go at 11pm at night so I can get through it as time efficiently as possible.

That all being said we have recently begun experimenting with Click & Collect grocery shopping and it may be our primary way of grabbing food other than what we get through Amazon Prime.

Reservations si vu play

I’ve tried grocery delivery services in the past and have had so-so experiences. When I first heard that grocery chains up here in Canada were going to start experimenting and rolling out click & collect grocery shopping I had a ton of questions and a lot of things I thought would be issues. Prior to roll out of these services I had even talked at length with a marketing executive of one of these companies during a wedding reception to ask how they were planning to tackle things.

How do you pick produce? Everyone is particular with what they want.

How do you train your people to pick the fresh produce. Does everyone’s fresh scale differ?

How do you satisfy the the lady who needs to knock on all the cucumbers? How long does it take?

How long will I wait as a customer?

Do I really want someone else touching my stuff?

What if they miss something on my list and I paid for it?

How much would they charge for this service?

Despite the reservations we gave it a shot anyways and it worked out really well. I can’t speak for all grocery chains or even each store but the ones we have tried have all been positive thus far.

How it works

At some point before we want to pick up the groceries, we go onto the store’s website to find all our items and add them to a virtual shopping cart and then checkout. We usually do this the night before and then select the window of time the next day that we want to pick up and that is available from the grocery store pick up timetable.

A little while before you are scheduled to go pick up your order, an staff member at the grocery store will go around and pick up all of your requested items from each part of the store. If something is out of stock, they will grab a substitute item and then send a notification to your email asking if you want to accept the substitution.

When your designated time arrives, head to the store and park in one of the specially marked click and collect parking spots, call the a special click and collect phone number to tell them that you are are. The same staff member will then bring your groceries out and put them in your car, and then you are off driving back home will a car full of groceries.

Is it worth it?

In short, yeah it is.

While it isn’t always perfect it is well worth trying out. The produce that is chosen is usually excellent enough to make that lady who knocks on cucumbers happy. From what I’ve heard, the staff are given special training to choose the best produce – this helps the store get the new initiative off the ground and remove some of the key reservations people have with it.

Each transaction is tied to that staff member who picks out the items. If someone calls to complain, the store will know who needs retraining or re-assignment.

The hardest part is the time consuming nature of picking out your items online through the store’s website. I expect this to get better over time and the ability to save items for future reference is a great feature. My recommendation is throw on a show on Netflix that you usually binge and instead of scrolling through your phone absent mindlessly, go grocery shopping online.

There is a small fee associated with the service but it is so minimal at this point that I wouldn’t even think twice about it. It costs $3 per order to pick up at off-peak times, busier times it costs $5.

Driving up, getting groceries and leaving is much better than the whole circus involved with unpacking a toddler from the car, putting them into a shopping cart and then trying to navigate around the store. Especially true if you happen to be pushing back nap time and your lovely toddler is having an outburst or throwing things out of the cart.

It makes things simple, which I always appreciate. It works with our schedule and most importantly gives us time back in our day.