Have you ever had Safeway (or some other grocery store) deliver your groceries to your house? I tried that this week for the first time, and it was great! I made my list, went to the website Monday night, picked all the stuff I wanted, and told them to deliver it Tuesday morning.
Then at 1 a.m. I remembered a few more items I had forgotten so I went back to the site, added those things to my order, and poof! the delivery guy rolled up to my house at 10:00 Tuesday morning with twenty bags of groceries (that should last about two weeks-ish. I stocked up on some things so the cans of corn will last longer…). My kids were completely fascinated with some nice grocery guy bringing us tons of food (nice, professional, non-scary looking delivery man goes a long way too). The store coming to you sure beats taking the kids to the store!
Safeway often has specials that if you buy a certain number of certain items, they give you some sort of incentive. When you buy online, you can see all the incentive qualifying items together as well as being able to see whatever other discounted items you have in your cart. Being able to see all the discounts in one place makes it much easier to buy with a heavy discount. My bill came to $150 (just under) for twenty bags of groceries (five kids remember, who seem to do nothing but eat and grow, which I think may be related…), and I got a pair of free Spiderman 3 movie tickets on top of that for things that my children seem to think are the only snacks worth eating (namely Gogurt and fruit rollups). They sweetly put how much money I saved from shopping specials, and my savings came to around $65 or 30% of my bill. Hurray!
My other exciting discovery that helps organize the shopping is this great site, www.TheGroceryGame.com, that lets you pick a grocery store in your area, and then it gives you a huge list every week of all the store specials, manufacturer coupons (and where to get them), and every single discount you can possibly get. It’s so cool! The stores run their discounts on a regular cycle, so if you stock up when specific sections are on sale it cuts down your bill.
I made my menu for the week, figured out what I needed for that, and then checked out the Grocery Game list for anything else that I use frequently to stock up on them (my referral email is rachel@gymboreenews.com if you decide you want to try it out. They will ask you who referred you.). I am planning to run this experiment with the Grocery Game and Safeway delivery for a couple of months and see if it actually helps my grocery bill. I will, of course, report back when the verdict is in.
Rachel
Fiendish friend for effusive fun!
