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For a monthly or yearly membership fee, Thrive Market members can shop via the platform primarily for pantry and frozen staples, which come with a low-price guarantee. The platform also includes other household staples such as beauty, bath and body, vitamins and supplements and even wine. We found that the selection at Thrive was more than sufficient to provide a lot of great options for pantry staples, including its own proprietary brand of more than 700 items, snacks, and especially frozen proteins and meals. The specialty items here support 90+ lifestyle and dietary needs, so there is something for everyone.
If you don't mind the occasional oddly shaped orange or citrus that's fully usable but has a bit of browning on the peel, Misfits Market offers low prices on produce. Misfits may have made a name by selling cheap, ugly produce that is deemed unfit for grocery store shelves, but it's evolved into a full-service grocery operation with meats, fish, baking supplies and pantry staples.
The convenient subscription service doesn't require you to pay any subscription fees and has cheap shipping. The one catch is that the inventory changes fairly drastically from week to week. That's how they keep prices low, but it also means you'll have to actively curate orders or you might receive items that you don't like. Here's our full review of Misfits Market.
Hungryroot (full review here) is a grocery subscription service that makes weekly suggestions based on a quiz you'll take to gauge your eating habits and dietary preferences. One of this service's unique features is that it offers simple and flexible meal ideas with the necessary groceries to make them. It's somewhere between a meal kit and a grocery delivery service and is great for those looking for breakfast, lunch and dinner inspiration.
The online grocery market stocks a good amount of quality, organic and specialty items including meat, seafood, produce, snacks and pantry items, but you won't find as many options as vendors such as Amazon Fresh or FreshDirect.
Once the initial suggested list is formulated, you can remove any grocery items and add others based on a credit system. I priced out a full list from Hungryroot and compared it to an average grocery store. By my calculations, Hungryroot is about 8% to 10% more expensive. The interface and ordering platform are both intuitive and even fun to use.
With competitive prices, great selection and timely deliveries, FreshDirect is actually my favorite grocery delivery service to use, but because it's currently only available in the Northeast, it's hard to tap as the No. 1 overall pick.
FreshDirect has a wide-ranging selection of fresh produce, meats, fish, prepared foods, pantry items and home and paper products. There are definitely fewer total items than in a brick-and-mortar supermarket, but I found just about everything I would normally buy on a trip to the grocery store. FreshDirect stocks plenty of organic and specialty items at similar prices to Stop & Shop or Wegmans.
FreshDirect's website is easy to navigate and deliveries are almost always on time, in our experience. Customer service is also great and if anything is missing or damaged, they'll replace it in the next delivery or credit your account, no questions asked.
Instacart is a local grocery delivery service and operates differently than the first two on our list. This third-party service hires shoppers to head to a local store of your choosing, buy the items and deliver them to your door. The good news is you'll get to order from your favorite local grocery store if you have one you like. Instacart is available for most grocery chains — Publix, Aldi, Stop & Shop and Costco — but the store options will vary depending on your location. You can view the estimated delivery time for each store before choosing one.
The downside is that you have to be at attention and check the app for messages from your shopper while they're shopping in case certain items are out of stock. The shopper will typically send photos of potential replacements in real time for you to approve or reject. It can be a little bit stressful and time-consuming but it's still a time-saver over going to the store yourself. You can also track the grocery delivery in real-time via the mobile app to see when it will arrive.
Instacart also marks prices up on most groceries, sometimes as much as 14%. And there's a delivery fee and suggested tipping associated with each order, making it one of the more expensive options on our list. In addition to delivery, Instacart offers in-store pickup for online orders at some stores.
Gopuff isn't the one-stop-shop for groceries that some of these other outfits are, but it has one big thing going for it and that's speed. Gopuff stocks mostly the essentials, including snacks, dry goods, household products, paper goods and pharmacy staples, and can have them to your door in as little as 30 minutes (sometimes even around 15 if all goes well) and almost always under an hour.
Gopuff is a great option if you need staples and need them fast but it won't replace a run to the grocery store and has fewer options than say, FreshDirect or Instacart. You will find a scant selection of fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products and what you do find, is stocked fairly inconsistently. Gopuff has a large delivery footprint, operating in over 650 US cities via 500 regional micro fulfillment centers.
Target-owned Shipt is similar to Instacart, offering personal shoppers who will secure your desired list from local supermarket chains and wholesale outlets, including Target. Shipt focuses more on discount area retailers, including Costco, so you'll find plenty of deals and bulk savings.
Besides the wealth of low prices, another big draw for using Shipt is having groceries delivered same-day, sometimes as quickly as an hour. Other services require you to schedule delivery times days in advance. This is great if you're not the best at planning your weekly routine and often need groceries in a hurry.
You can also tack on far more than groceries, especially if your order is from Target. Need a pound of potatoes, a table lamp and a smartwatch? Shipt can bring it all to your door.
To test each grocery delivery service, we placed an order from each with various, typical groceries including produce and meats (when available), dry goods, snacks and paper products. We noted how intuitive each ordering platform was and how good the selection was for various categories.
We also took notice of delivery options since some grocery services allow for same-day and next-day delivery while others require you to schedule in advance. When the boxes of groceries arrived, we noted how well the items were packed, if everything was included and how fresh — or not fresh — the meats, produce, cheese and other perishable items looked.
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While most of the fresh fruits and vegetables we received were fine, there was the occasional bruised tomato or apple. If you have a local market with a good selection of produce, you may want to pop in for those items and have the rest of your list delivered.
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The most obvious perks to buying your groceries online are the convenience of not driving to the store, wandering through aisles and waiting in checkout lines. Another bonus for shopping online is the ability to compare prices easily. If you see a box of Cheerios for $5, you can quickly compare that price to other stores and decide if it's a good price. Before placing your order, you can see the total tab, which is a luxury that in-person shopping doesn't afford.
Shopping for groceries online also allows you to carefully read the nutritional information and search for any ingredients that may be unfamiliar or read reviews of a product you may not be familiar with. Online grocery services often have reviews of products to help you decide on the best stuff.
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This all depends on which grocery delivery service you purchase from. We did some calculations and buying groceries online is very similar in price to buying in person from a midpriced supermarket. If you shop using one of the discount or bulk retailers such as Boxed.com, you're probably getting a better deal than you would at the local grocery store.
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We found using nearly all of the grocery delivery services we've tested very easy and intuitive. Services such as FreshDirect, Amazon Fresh and Boxed.com are as simple as any other online shopping experience where you build a cart, select a delivery day, pay for it and that's it.
Other services with live shoppers such as Shipt and Instacart require a bit more attention and time since you have to respond to your shopper in real-time when items are out of stock and confirm or deny replacements. Those services also typically require you to be home when the driver arrives, whereas other services don't.
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Source: cnet.com