Blog Minx

I am a huge fan of buying groceries online. I generally don’t like the hassle of supermarket shopping and it saves time, time which I can then spend working, blogging or doing Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions, whatever I feel like. Depending on your location, many large supermarket chains now offer such a service.

Advantages of grocery shopping online:

• Time saved. No driving, parking, venturing into the crowded supermarket, wrestling with the broken trolley, loading your car with bags, returning home only to repeat the next week
• Saving your shopping list in the system so it is ready for next time, like magic
• Searching for items using a search box, instead of idly wheeling a trolley down numerous aisles looking for the turmeric
• Low delivery fees. Usually just $10-$15 depending on where you live
• Easy access to the list of Specials and bypassing the usual tempting tricks of chocolate bars and trashy magazines at the checkout
• Can order in advance and choose date and time of delivery

Disadvantages of grocery shopping online

• Brand recognition issues. You know you like the cookies in the purple sparkly packaging, but what are they called?
• Size issues. It’s hard to tell from the thumbnail image how big the bag of flour is and you struggle with measurements, metric or otherwise
• Not eco-friendly. You can’t use reusable shopping bags – what would Al Gore say?
• Lack of control. You don’t get to manually pick your own fruit/veges etc although they usually do a good job of that, I find
• Not interacting with people. I’ve read that supermarkets can be a great place to potentially meet the love of your life if you’re single. Although there is the delivery man… and perhaps you just don’t like people or are agoraphobic, in which case this would be in the ‘pro’ list for you

Have you/would you shop at a virtual supermarket?