Grocery store shelves are being emptied all over the country...

I do now...

What can I say?

Brain fart.
Busted.

The irony is that I was posting that from a Central Office while working on a chronic (non-DST or DSL) trouble.

 

No curbside pick-up for our local supermarkets. No delivery either. I think one supermarket offering on-line ordering, but to pick the order, I still have to enter the store, thus defeating the purpose.

I just tried Walmart Grocery for the first time. No grocery delivery in our area. Yeah, the only order pickup window available was 6-7pm Thursday (5.5 days from ordering). I have ordered online Walmart.com before and had the item sent to the store to pick it up, but this is the first time using online shopping for groceries. I'll see how it goes.

 

That's a bummer.. My friend, if you need to go to the grocery, try to go there lets say on a Tuesday morning or any time you think has the least people so you can go in and out in a flash. Be safe..

 

Apparently numerous restaurants are turning to grocery sales. This helps keep staff employed, and shifts some institutional supply chain production and distribution to the retail market. Not just food, but TP too:

AP via KOMOTV: US restaurants turn to grocery sales to help offset losses

This could also cut some of the crowding at traditional grocery stores.

 

Did our first ever Walmart Grocery pick-up yesterday. All things considered, under the current situation, it worked very well. Ordered on last Sunday morning, and the earliest and only pick-up slot open was yesterday (Thursday) 6-7pm. Out of ~30 items ordered, 8 items were unavailable. They notified me by e-mail when it was ready, or I could use the phone app to check the status. Once arrived at the store, used app to check-in and pick up items at the specifically marked Pick-Up area on side of the store building. Waited a few minutes after check-in, and a boy clerk brought down the grocery which included 4x40lbs bags of water softener salt, and loaded them into the back of our SUV. No contact with any human except just a few words exchanged with the clerk and slipping $10 bill through cracked window for his tip. Did not even have to get out of my car.

Even though I intentionally did not check "substitution", they did substitution for 6 items anyway. A few substitutions were acceptable, like sweet onion substituted with yellow onion, but there are a few items that substitution was not acceptable, like gluten free cereal substituted with regular wheat based cereal. Good thing is that Walmart allows full refunds on unwanted substitutions without returning back the item. In the area where home delivery is not available like ours, this is the best way to grocery shop COVID-19 way.

 

I did my third Wally pickup yesterday (cans, almond milk, rice, etc.) and already have my fourth scheduled for Sunday...weather permitting.
(weedeater string and premixed fuel...more cans....some other household items.)
Hurricane Season Prep made easy!

I'll likely use this mode of shopping much more in the future.

The "allow substitutions" box is checked by default and if you make changes to your order it will go back to the default setting....which I've kept from happening to me. Many items are out of date but multiple trips usually keeps our pantries bulked up.
(I shop for several people)

Our local Wally stoutly refuses tipping, and the last delivery person that I tried to tip looked a little offended at the attempt.

 

Wow! That's a news to me. I know they are not getting any hazard pay. I would not tip grocery clerk during a normal time. But now, I feel obliged to pay something extra just to show the sign of our appreciation.

 

Wife and neighbor has a horrible grocery pickup experience at Kroger. They ordered a week before their appointment. They were a little early but still had to wait over an hour before they got the order which was filled inaccurately.

 

A few weeks ago we tried to order from Aldi for delivery by InstaCart, but they kept postponing the expected delivery date and several days later canceled altogether, saying they were overwhelmed. Ordered from Meijer via Shipt and got our stuff the same day. Last Friday evening (a week ago yesterday) ordered from Meijer via Shipt again and got our stuff by 10am Saturday. Shipt is $14/mo. or $8/mo. if you sign up for a year -- but you can cancel any time. We do usually add a 10% or 15% tip.

Nice thing about Shipt is that the shopper keeps in touch by text, letting us know if the store is out of an item and asking about substitutes. The most recent one even texted to say that she (I think there are more women Shipt shoppers than men, but there are men too) was in the checkout line and would soon be on her way.

 

The good indian restaurant has closed, which makes me very upset. There are two others in the area but both are pretty bad compared to the first. Honestly I'll be amazed if we manage to keep any restaurants that are not megachains.

I'd really like to see every chain restaurant in the country adopt a nearby mom & pop restaurant to somehow assist.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to get at least tips replacements to my barber, but didn't manage to gather proper contact info.

 

We did do one takeout order from a local Thai restaurant a few weeks back, and it seems they are still open for takeout. Got a drive-thru order at Arby's last week. Many of the chain restaurants around here had closed even before the coronavirus problem. Bob Evans, Applebees, Chick-Fil-A, McDonalds, and BK are still open for takeout or drive-through; the first two are offering deliveries as well; not sure about CFA.

 

thanks. i just signed up, no delivery windows available, check back later.

 

the one good sushi place broke lease and went out of business a couple weeks ago, we are up to 4 bankruptcies of local small businesses in this small area
some have been around a very long time.

Quite unfortunate circumstances

another oddity is many places have stopped delivering and require you to go and pickup , they have stopped participating in the 3rd party delivery places also, not sure why

 

I suspect that the only reason I'm able to get delivery from my local Weis market is because most of my neighbors are still in complete denial about distancing and outbreak ramifications, so they're still going down there 4x a week.

My small business is all service, and we are down at least 40% in this. If our business had any kind of physical presence I would have already broken the lease and liquidated the 'stuff.'

My own theory is that they still aren't paying enough for the shoppers and drivers to risk all that contact. Based on the fees I'm being charged, they're not paying those people anywhere near enough. I make sure that at the drivers get tipped properly, but it's long past time for the business office to recognize that they've been taking a free ride on labor and start making some adjustments. Services like shopping and delivery should be a lot more expensive.

 

stores are mellowing in my area. not many people, even on saturday, and while not fully stocked, pretty good. no waiting to get in.

still not thinking were are ready to be back to normal though, unless we want a big relapse, excuse typos....got dogs and kid pawing me.
kris

 

My neighborhood Chinese, which was here long before we arrived three decades ago (changed ownership once), is still operating. It always did a substantial amount of takeout, so was well positioned to keep operating.

Along my pandemic bicycling routes (the main non-pandemic routes have been axed for lack of sufficient distancing), a nearby Thai place is still operating too. But these paths don't go close to very many nearby eateries.

 

Read a few days, um week, maybe weeks, ago that the promotional discounts advertised by at least one of those third party delivery services was being paid by the restaurant.

Cash is probably to only way to do that. Door dash was using tips through the app to reduce what they paid to the driver, and were caught doing it again after claiming they stopped.

The population is older around my parents; mostly retirees. So they've been more cautious about any contact with others.

 

I bit the bullet and went to both Sam's Club and Smart n Final yesterday late in the morning. There were more things on the shelves but there were still some things out of stock and quantity limits on others.

Sam's looked like a typical Costco in southern California, not the Sam's Club in a smaller Arizona town it normally is. Crowded with checkout lines 10-15 deep. I would say only about 10% of us were wearing masks. They got in multiple pallets of toilet paper. I didn't need any and didn't buy any. I sat for a minute, though, just to see how people were reacting to it. People were grabbing it "just because". Guys were even confirming with their wives they didn't need any and still throwing some in their carts. Inconsiderate people.

S&F wasn't as busy. A clerk was stationed at the front of the building spraying and wiping down carts. They had social distancing markers on the floor in single file around the inside perimeter of the store. Another clerk was stationed at the front of the line directing the next shopper to a register once the previous customer finished their transaction. It moved pretty quickly. They have installed plexiglass shields between the customer and the cashier.

Between the two stores I was able to get everything on my shopping list except powdered milk, primarily because I'm not particularly picky about the brand on most items.. Most of my bread-making machine's recipes call for the powdered milk, though, so I'll have to figure out a liquid milk equivalent and try that.

I won't need to go to the store for another three weeks to a month.

 

Agreed. I got some cash out of the bank, baked it in the oven at 200°F for an hour so I don't have to wonder about spreading germs. Then I'll generally put a twenty in a sandwich baggie hooked on the door for the driver.