WOO HOO! Wal-Mart online grocery shopping is the answer to many daily problems
If you have never shared a story of mine before, this is one, which I personally request you share with all your friends. It’s the one service many of us need, if not for ourselves, then for our grandparents or a young parent in the family.
I can’t believe I’m saying this. I’m excited about shopping with Wal-Mart. Yep! Wal-Mart!
After almost a year in the news, Wal-Mart has been rolling out this service to various areas, a few at a time. Here is the link to their original story back in September 2015. I’m so glad it has finally come to Tennessee.
http://blog.walmart.com/innovation/20150929/grocery-shopping-that-works-with-your-schedule
I shop at Wal-Mart many times, but the overwhelming size of their stores, the constant noise, and all the activity, is something I survive, not something I enjoy. I try to shop at smaller corner markets or dollar stores for everyday items, but many times, these many exact items are priced higher than Wal-Mart, and I end up paying for the atmosphere, not the products. Enter online grocery shopping with grocery drive-up curb service to smaller cities.
All the savings we have come to expect from Wal-Mart, but without the fuss and the hassle of going into the store.
This is a revolutionary idea for people who live in average sized cities.
In larger cities many people already have groceries delivered to their homes, and in huge cities, like New York, NY or Nashville, TN, there are membership companies families can join which will bring their groceries to them any time of day from almost any grocery store. Having their groceries delivered in these areas is nothing new to them, but to people who live in the smaller cities, we’re typically overlooked for wonderful convenient services, which puts a huge burden on our time and wallet. In fact, Wal-Mart does offer home delivery of groceries in select areas, but we aren’t one of those areas.
The ability to complete our grocery shopping online, without huge membership fees, is a great start for our family and other families in our community.
Here is how it works: you order online, pay online, schedule your pickup time and drive up to allow the employee to load your groceries for you. There are no membership fees, no tips are allowed, and the groceries are the exact same price as the price in the store from where you are ordering (no coupons can be used at this time, but in future roll-outs of the plan, coupon usage might be an added feature).
My friends are already using the service, and they love it. One of my friends is a young mother of 2 young children, and the service has kept her diet on track. When she is tired and hungry and wresting her children, she is tempted to purchase junk food, but this service helps keep her on track. My other friend is disabled. She normally has to rely on other people to complete her grocery shopping for her, or spend hours of her valuable time shopping, only to be exhausted by the time she is done. She then feels too sick to cook good food, which negates the reason for buying good food in the first place.
At this moment, the service is only in select areas, but the areas are in smaller towns overlooked by other companies. Wal-Mart is playing it smart. They see the need and are servicing those who want help, but other companies have ignored. Wal-Mart has stepped in where other stores would not. I’m pleased to tell anyone who will listen to try the service.
For instance, Kroger does the same service, but even though there is a huge population of young parents and older Veterans, they do not service our area. I’ve requested this for a very long time from Kroger. I’ve even gone so far as to write the main office and give the details of our demographics and how their stores could help our residents. They have yet to bring they shopping service to our town.
From what I’ve been told, there will be a huge roll out during the month of October, 2016. Be sure to punch your zip code into their website and see if the service is in your area; if not, get on the phone and ask them to help your community like they are helping others. Call your local store for more details and to request they bring the shopping service as early as possible to the store nearest to you.
Find out where the service is located here:
Plus, check out all the information for online grocery shopping right here:
http://grocery.walmart.com/usd-estore/help/helppageslinkscontainer.jsp?divid=aboutWalmart
I know there will be many people who complain this is just a money making scheme for Wal-Mart (which actually is hard for them, too; online shopping decreases those spur of the moment purchases), but you know what? I don’t care. They are providing a service, which will benefit so many regular people, without a membership, or increase in prices; I honestly don’t care how they make it work out for them.
It doesn’t matter to me what people think of Wal-Mart or why they chose to add this to their services. What matters to me is how many real people this will help. The number of families this will help is staggering.
The people, who have been suffering at home, without good healthy food, will finally be able to live a semi-normal life. Those are the people I care about, and they are finally getting the help they need.
When I read of this service, I really wanted to cry for joy.
My children are grown now, but the many times we spent in grocery stores, when we were all grumpy and tired, after long days of work and school, left us many evenings with only enough time for baths and quick hugs before bedtime. To avoid this after work mess, and missing wonderful evenings with my angels, I would hire a babysitter to watch the kids only after I put them to bed. I would then go grocery shopping alone; late at night (this was before 24 hour stores). This put me at physical risk, made me very tired the next day, and created a very irritating an unhealthy environment. At least two or more times each month, for their entire life, many hours were spent in grocery stores. Not only that, the very little money I earned was spent on someone watching my children sleep, just so I could go grocery shopping for the family.
I’m not the only single parent who spent very valuable hours, money, and energy to get groceries. There are single parents everyday who live through this day after day. When money is tight, the last thing a single parent wants to do is pay someone to watch their sleeping children, just so they don’t have to subject their children to the nosy chore of grocery shopping.
In the many years I raised my children alone, I have wasted hundreds of dollars, which could have gone to better groceries, clothes, fun things for the kids, or even bills. Being tired and stressed, mommies forget things like keys, checkbooks, or later, even cell phones, and I was no different. In the 12 years of carrying my kids grocery shopping with me, I spent money on locksmiths at least five times (or maybe more) because I either lost my keys in the store, my daughter once flushed them, or I locked my keys in my car.
Thank goodness I’ve never once locked my kids in the car, but I did lose my keys enough times and lock the keys in my car enough times for that bill to be pretty high during the 12 years my kids could not stay home alone or were with me after work. I’ve wasted money on food because while we were all tired, hungry, and grumpy, I bought more things than I should, or I’ve even left groceries at the store, only to realize the mistake after getting home, and the groceries would be long gone after that. In 12 years, I spent money on snacks to keep the kids happy while shopping, or a quick meal after shopping as a reward for them being extra good. Not only did I spend valuable, tight money on these things, which were in my own control, but also I’ve wasted money on my car because of people dinging my car, or outright hitting my car, and driving off. I could not afford full coverage car insurance, so I either had to let the car remain damaged or fix it myself. With two hungry children and a single income, fixing an older car was out of the question.
So many parents will really enjoy this service. This service will save so many young, stressed out mothers the agony of embarrassment for grabbing too many groceries and not realizing they don’t have enough money to pay for it all, the agony of saying no to their children, the sadness of spending very valuable hours in a terribly lit, too loud, too busy store, with unsafe parking lots, instead of spending those wonderful evening hours with their precious babies, at home, gently making dinner or doing homework.
This service won’t only be a godsend to young parents, but many other groups of people too.
This is a wonderful service for the elderly. There will be no more searching and searching for someone to help them find exactly what they need in a store too big for their energy or their memory, or worry they may get robbed while shopping alone. They only need someone (or themselves) to drive up to the curb to pick up the groceries, and they won’t even have to open their car doors to get out. I really wish this service had been around when my father was alive. His shopping trips would have been nicer, and he would have been more independent with this type of shopping.
This is wonderful for disabled adults. No more three hour shopping trips, only to be totally exhausted after shopping. No more embarrassment over the electric carts breaking down or the cart basket not being big enough for the groceries needed for the week. No more ordering bunches of delivery food, like pizza, because it’s easier to order delivery food than to get dressed to grocery shop for hours and hours.
This is just fantastic for parents of autistic or disabled children. There will be no more over-stimulation from all the bright lights and too many noises. The parents will no longer be forced to push a wheelchair and a buggy and become worried about bathroom issues when their disabled child (or themselves) need to go to the restroom, and the restroom is either dirty, too small, or just inconvenient to handle a wheelchair, a buggy, and two people. My sister has a handicapped child, who is now a handicapped adult, and going out in public is always a difficult decision at best. At worst, her trips to the store can end in melt downs including screaming, hitting, and kicking from her adult child, with no help from anyone, but plenty of nasty looks from those who think they can do better. This service from Wal-Mart will help each and every family which deals with these real issues daily.
Many adults or children who are deaf, mute, speak another language, or speak with an electronic voice box (like my father) will find shopping online so much better and experience less stress. No more wondering if someone will understand them or will be able to help them find the exact product they are looking for, they can order everything from home, drive up, and have the products loaded, with very little interaction with other people.
This is service is wonderful for immune compromised people because many people really are terrible about washing their hands and immune compromised people can get sick very easily while shopping. This service will help keep immune compromised people from facing all the germs associated with big stores.
This service will be great for the new parents who are overworked and exhausted. When new parents run out of diapers, formula, milk, or other essentials needed for the first 8 weeks of parenthood, all they will need to do is gather their baby, throw on the cleanest dirty shirt and jeans they have (because, let’s be honest, many new parents need to wear t-shirts and jeans more than once), and drive up to the Wal-Mart curb to pick up their essentials and get back to being wonderful parents.
This will make their lives so much better. I cry from joy when I think about how many times I had ran out of diapers in the middle of the week and had to grab the emergency cloth diapers I knew I would need. Sure, these worked just fine, but it was one more thing I had to wash on the weekends, all because I was just too exhausted to get to the store in time.
This service will be great for people on special diets. It doesn’t matter if a person is a diabetic, or following a special diet to lose weight, the problems are all the same. When you get into the store, finding what you need is always a battle. Not only do items change from week to week, but many times the store changes where they put things, so finding what you need, to stick to a healthy diet, becomes more trouble than what it is worth.
There are many people who deal with anxiety disorders and / or Fibromyalgia, or other disorders, which not only make a person fatigued after dealing with the public, but can send them into shock from the over stimulation of activity from such a huge store. I’ve personally ran into the bathroom or the back of the store (the oil aisle or sports corner is normally best) to escape the anxiety and pain I experienced from all the lights, sounds, and activity associated with all big box stores. The pain I experience from one trip remains with me for two to three days after one shopping experience. This service will help people like me greatly.
You can read one of my experiences in Wal-Mart on my blog here: (warning: strong language used in this one)
With this service, a person can pick what they like, what they need, make weekly menus with their spouse, budget their money, and even look up nutritional information, all from the comfort of their home, even while the kiddos are sleeping. Families can use real menu cards and recipe cards (which if Wal-Mart is smart, they will eventually add in the website for customers to use), and order directly off the menu cards to complete weekly or monthly menus and monthly food budgets.
There are people who use UBER, taxis’, or other modes of transportation for errands. This service will save them money on their shopping trips and errands. They no longer have to call a service, pay for the trip, go shopping, and wait for a service to carry them back home. They only need to pay for one trip to the store, and if so inclined, they can immediately head back home.
There is one more group of people I want people to think of when I praise this service. That group of people is the single elderly people, who cannot drive, or who live in residential elderly homes and depend on the paid van to take them shopping or who live alone and depend on public transportation to go shopping. These vans and buses normally have a time limit, which they give the elderly for all their shopping needs and exploring the store for other needs. Imagine never leaving your residential home and only having two hours in a super Wal-Mart for shopping and socializing.
Two hours isn’t anytime at all to complete grocery shopping, enjoy the new items, and purchase gifts for grandchildren and a few craft supplies for hobbies. This service will eliminate one item on that list. This group of people will not be flustered to grocery shop. They will no longer be forced to determine the prices of everything in an over-stimulated store full of noise, screaming kids, and people rushing back and forth. They can use the help of their nurses back at their homes to order their groceries online, enjoy their shopping experience, and pick up their groceries when it is time to leave.
I cry thinking of how much this service will help them not feel overwhelmed with the time limits set on them when they may only get one outing per week.
Americans are overworked, underpaid, and just exhausted. The easiest thing to do is to order junk food instead of dealing with big stories. This service, from Wal-Mart, is one-step closer to getting healthy food in the home, on the table, with less stress, more time with the family, and inside a budget.
Thank you, Walmart, for providing a service, which helps so many families and will help bring real food to the table of hardworking Americans.
Walmart, I applaud you for this.
Until next time…be safe, be kind, and always be happy.
Grits, Hugs, and Sweet Tea 