Back in March I had the opportunity to join other NJ Mommy Bloggers at The Frog and Peach Restaurant in New Brunswick for a workshop on budget and family friendly food options at Stop and Shop.We also had a chance to talk with Peg Merzbacher, Director of Marketing at PeaPod, who educated us on the helpful features on PeaPod, Stop and Shop's online grocery store, like saved grocery lists and healthy food filters. Since then, one of my goals was to try out PeaPod especially since lugging heavy groceries along with a baby and diaper bag hasn't been to fun lately! I will be honest that I never really considered online grocery shopping since I didn't have a reason not to physically go to the store. However, when a friend of mine mentioned that her sister saved a ton of money without the impulse shopping, I knew I had to give it a try.
Health friendly shopping
It's quite simple to navigate through PeaPod and I won't bore you with the specifics, but there is one feature that Peg really wanted us to know and to share with others. For those of you who follow a strict diet like Gluten-Free or Peanut-Free or Low Sodium, there is a feature called the MyNutraFilter at the top of the screen (see Figure). It allows you to select a filter so that when you shop for let's say, soup or cereal, the foods that fall under the filter will appear first above other options. That way, you don't have to scroll through a bunch of foods that don't work for you.Right to the sales
At the main page, there is a space to type in your Stop and Shop value card number for instant savings. Additionally, at the bottom of the screen is a link to all of the Weekly Specials to save you time looking for them. However, as you shop through the various "aisles," food marked with a red flag is a sale item. There are also coupon codes available for first time shoppers including 60 days of FREE delivery!
No more impulse shopping
So I know bringing a shopping list to the supermarket is supposed to keep you on track and prevent you from overspending, but I still fall prey to impulse shopping. Especially if something is on sale or a new flavor or a new cleaning product. Shopping online eliminates that temptation. Instead of browsing aisles looking at all the food/products you don't need but buy anyway, you have categories and words to click on-not as glamorous and therefore not tempting.
Forget something? Just click and you're done
Don't you hate it when you go to the store to get something specific and then leave with other items and not what you went for to begin with? Forget about going back to the store, especially when you have cold/frozen groceries and did I mention the 1-year old baby? With PeaPod, if you forgot to add an item, you have a few hours after placing your order to adjust your list. That includes: adding/deleting items, changing delivery date and time, and adding promotional/coupon codes.
Tracking your orders
One thing that I tried to do with receipts and memory is to see how long certain bulk items last before I have to restock. Like how often do we do big shopping trips where we have to replace big ticket items like cleaning supplies, toilet paper, shampoo, soap, etc? I'm not an organized mommy shopper with a coupon box and supermarket circulars. I often forget about getting the Sunday paper to clip coupons. With PeaPod, you can save orders and either order the same thing again or use them as a reference. I would love to get to the point where I know what day of the week I'll need to restock on dinner meat or after how many weeks will I need to replace toiletries, etc. Having previous orders saved will hopefully make that easier for me!
Final thoughts
I was really happy with my first PeaPod experience. It felt good to keep my bill under $100 and stock up on many of our essentials for the week. As with all supermarkets however, there are some that have better deals than others. I will continue to buy my frozen vegetables and chick peas at Wegman's (less than $.90 a bag and $.65 a can is hard to top). I also use Truvia sugar instead of Splenda/Sweet 'n' Low and that isn't available online either. But, the pros heavily outweigh the cons and shopping online may not be a weekly occurrence (we enjoy getting out and shopping together as a family), but it will definitely be something I do more often.
I was really happy with my first PeaPod experience. It felt good to keep my bill under $100 and stock up on many of our essentials for the week. As with all supermarkets however, there are some that have better deals than others. I will continue to buy my frozen vegetables and chick peas at Wegman's (less than $.90 a bag and $.65 a can is hard to top). I also use Truvia sugar instead of Splenda/Sweet 'n' Low and that isn't available online either. But, the pros heavily outweigh the cons and shopping online may not be a weekly occurrence (we enjoy getting out and shopping together as a family), but it will definitely be something I do more often.
Shop Now Save Later!
Perhaps this will entice you to give PeaPod a try: A special promotion for first time shoppers is going on where you get 60 Days of Free Shipping! Secondly, there are several other savings codes available through the rest of the year. Cha-ching!
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