No one has yet managed to master the art of grocery delivery, which is a darned shame. Several companies have tried, but the results tend to be extremely restricted in area, and occasionally aggravating. These Chowhound users share their stories of grocery deliveries gone wrong - usually in the form of deliveries that arrive far later than they should have. Sometimes so late that everyone has to skip dinner. Bummer!
Kozmo.com was the gold standard for food delivery in the 90s. But not only did it not last the Great Dot Com Bubble Burst, it was never truly a grocery delivery service. And it was restricted to just a few major cities, as well. But if you wanted cough syrup and a feel-good movie at 8PM on a Sunday (this was back in the days of VHS rentals, remember) Kozmo had your back.
I would venture to say that grocery shopping is one of the biggest, most unnecessary time-sucks in the lives of most people. Sure, you like to browse the shelves and find new ingredients sometimes. But 80% of your grocery trips involve buying the same old stuff you always buy. Maintenance shopping, if you will. It's half an hour, maybe an hour a session or more, and most people shop at least once a week if not more often. What a waste!
Personally, if stores can't get it together to offer delivery, I would be happy for an in-between step: a drive through service. Browse their website to add all your food to your cart, check out and pay for it, then pick it up later from a drive-through window. I would definitely pay a few bucks extra to have that time freed up for me, and I'm sure the stores would prefer to be able to cut down on their lines.
Until someone invents a proper food replicator, I guess we're stuck with the same dumb system for now!
Image courtesy Flickr/paulswansen
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