This past weekend my wife and I used Kroger's Grocery Pickup
service for the first time.
To begin my wife had talked to several
others who had used this service and so we decided we had to find out for
ourselves just how it worked.
This is where it does benefit you to
be a Kroger Loyalty Card member. When we went to the Kroger website and signed in, we found a
record of what we have purchased in the past. I cannot remember when we first
joined the Kroger Loyalty Card program, however, we probably joined soon after
it started (in the year 2000) - I like to do things like that.
Once you access the app on your
phone, or go online with a computer (which is what we did), the first thing you to do is to pick the
Kroger location you are going to pick up the groceries from. There are many
Kroger stores in our area, and we frequent 3 of them on a regular basis. The
one closest is the oldest and we use it more like a convenience store, quick in
and out. We have another one within 4+ miles where we used to go for our big
order’s, but then Kroger opened a bigger (newer) store about 6 miles away and we started
going there.
I mention the above because when
we were selecting the store for our grocery pickup it turned out not to be
anyone of the ones we would normally use. We had already been forewarned that it was not always
quick, same day, next day, kind of thing. We found a list of all Kroger
Stores on the website with suggested pick up times. The shortest in the list
was 4 days away, on Sunday, and it was a completely different location than we
were used to, but still within 5 miles. Since we started this on Wednesday night,
we had plenty of time and selected the shorted time location. We do not normally shop until Saturday or Sunday anyway
Once we brought up the website
on the computer, we started going through all the items. Adding things to the
cart was easy. First, we went through all the items we would normally purchase, then we started looking for items not on our normal list. We also
ordered some wine in the process.
Once we placed the order we did
not go back to add to, or alter, the order in any way. I understand you can do
that for a certain amount of time.
In talking to friends, we were
also warned of great lines at the pickup spaces at Kroger. Our pickup time was
set for between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM on Sunday. Preparing for long lines we arrived
at 12:25 PM to find there were no cars in the allotted spaces - so we pulled in.
The sign said to call a number and someone would take care of us.
We called the number, explained we were early, gave them our order number, and
they said not a problem. We were asked if we had coupons and then sent someone
out to the car to pick up the coupon (only one) and shortly our groceries were
brought to the car.
The people who brought out the
groceries put them into the back of the car, explained that one item, which was
out of stock, could be substituted with another, they had a suggestion which we
accepted. One item was not available and there was not a replacement.
We were back on the road by
12:50 PM and headed home.
Once home we brought in the
groceries and the wine and verified everything and said "This is cool. We
will do this again".
I will say it was a very
pleasant experience. We did discover we did not order a few things because when
walking down the aisles we were used to having a visual experience to remind us
of something we needed. In the case of ordering online you do not have that
same visual walk-through experience. Next time we will plan better, but for a first-time
trial - this was really great.
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