crushing on amazon fresh

Up to today, common esculents has been exclusively about restaurants. But that's just silly. Eating cheap starts at home, what? And the most important part of home cooking is getting the food in to the house. Which brings us to Amazon Fresh.

They even have cool looking trucks

It might seem a little strange for me, an able bodied dude, to be having groceries delivered, but I do it all the time. There are good reasons, like:

1. no car means shopping in person happens in small, frequent batches
2. grocery stores aren't fun to be in in general, and the local Safeway is extra bad (it makes me stabby)
3. having a bunch of cats means huge bags of food and litter (see point one)

See, it really does make sense. Now it's just a question of who is going to deliver.

After much trial and error, Amazon Fresh has proven itself to be the most pleasant grocery delivery service in town. The main competitors are Safeway.com and Spud.com.

Did you notice how much I like Safeway.com? I didn't even link to them. Because they suck. It starts with the website being clunky and hard to use. They package just about every single item in a separate plastic bag (a kidney punch for lady earth). The worst bit is the fact that they allow you to order stuff that they don't have in stock. You order a weeks worth of food and when it gets there you're short one thing for each meal. If I still have to go grocery shopping, then what's the point?

Spud, on the other hand, I like a lot. I like that it's all organic, and as local as possible. It even tells you how far away the stuff you want was made. It tallies it all up and gives you bonus points for buying locally. All good stuff.

There are points where it loses out. You can't schedule delivery. They tell you what day of the week they're doing your zip code, but not what time of day. If you're an urban dweller with no car, necessitating delivery, chances are you live in a big building with locked doors. So that's one day a week that you have to be home waiting for your groceries to show.

The other thing with Spud is that they're all organic and local. I know I listed this as an advantage, but it does mean I can't get cat food that my cats will actually eat. And while I love the idea of Seventh Generation I don't wipe with sandpaper. End of story.

I admit I'm being selfish about these, and not the uber-enviro guy that got me interested in Spud in the first place. I feel a bit guilty about it. Which is maybe the last thing about Spud that gets to me. It makes me feel guilty.

Amazon Fresh FTW
Amazon Fresh wins on all these things, except the distance calculator thing from Spud. Their website is a relative joy to use. They have the power of their inventory tracking system to make sure they have the items that they are selling to you. You can schedule a delivery to be within an 1 hour window, and it's free over 50 bucks (Safeway is 2 hours and $10). They don't go crazy with the bags. We get all of our groceries from there now.