Not all shopping is fun and grocery shopping is a chore compared to the more relaxing recreational type. Online grocery shopping is gradually taking off – as more people find the convenience and potential savings it offers suits their busy lifestyles. It has taken quite a few years for the online revolution to work out some of the finer points of providing a decent online grocery shopping service – and there is still some way to go in the fine tuning process. While the ‘real’ version of grocery shopping can be a fraught, time consuming and expensive process, the online variety should be a simple, easy and flexible way. Not all services have quite got this bit right yet, but for those of us who find ourselves in a daily struggle against the clock to fit everything in these services are improving all the time.

The good points

Sometimes the sheer physical labour of grocery shopping is exhausting. If you live in a large city and don’t own a car, the amount of carrying and weightlifting involved in grocery shopping is probably enough to permit yourself one less trip to the gym. For those with cars it is easier, to some extent; but driving to a large supermarket, then finding somewhere to park, then braving the crowds and the endless queues is time consuming and can leave you feeling exhausted; even more so, when this task has to be fitted in around work, school runs and other commitments. Online grocery shopping can be a great way to avoid all of these weekly – or even daily – nightmares.

Impulse buying is fatal to a healthy bank balance – and while most sensible shoppers take a list, sticking to the list can seem impossible. This is even more the case if you are accompanied by helpful children, who can locate all kinds of additional items with incredible adeptness. Again online grocery shopping allows you to stick firmly to the list – and more importantly the budget.

Room for improvement?

The main reason that online grocery shopping has been slow to really take off is that many shoppers are reluctant to purchase fresh produce, including dairy products, using a (faceless) third party. Most people are understandably wary about having a complete stranger pick their fresh produce. Quality concerns have perhaps been the most significant obstacle to the growth of this type of online purchasing. The other significant downside to online grocery shopping seems to be delivery slots. These are improving all the time, but you still need to work round them more often than they work around you.

The future?

Recent changes in the market have led to some of these concerns being addressed. The good old fashioned milkman has always been a reliable source for fresh dairy products – cutting out the need for endless extra trips to the shops. Today, dairies have begun to add to their list of grocery products and you can, in some cases, order nearly all of your online grocery shopping from your local milkman. Delivery is first thing in the morning and the order cut off time is usually late on the night before. This service also has an old fashioned personal touch to it. You get the same driver every day – and if there are any problems with quality it’s a lot easier to solve by having a chat with him/her and avoids endless calls to ‘customer focussed’ help lines. The dairies also operate to ‘milk rounds’ and don’t normally charge for delivery. It seems that as we become more confident in online grocery shopping, one of the big players in the future will be a very familiar face.