I tried online food shopping for the first time this week.
I signed up to Ocado ages ago, but never tried it, and with impending dissertation hand-in (we’re talking sub 30 days now) I don’t have time to cycle to the shops every other day so the prospect of food delivered to our fridge seemed a good one.
Ocado always seemed a bit different, they’ve been sending me cheery emails for a year or so, including this one that Dan talked about here. So I gave it a go. The first thing that’s weird about shopping online is that you’re not distracted by the stuff at the end of aisles, so you have to go in there with a game plan; what you’re going to eat and when.
Normally I’d amble around the supermarket with my iPod in my ears picking what I fancy, but you can’t really do that online, so I had to imagine a virtual supermarket layout in my head to get everything I needed, maybe there’s an idea here for a future online shopping, sure they’ve thought about it though.
Anyway, as it stands the Ocado site is really easy to use, I like the way food is categorised, and I like that the search is really human. Type in moosly and it doesn’t ask you “Did you mean Muesli?”, it just shows you some stuff that you could eat for breakfast. Nice.
But, it gets better. You can choose your delivery slots by the hour or just by when there’s another van in the area to keep fuel wastage down. I like that sort of common sense.
Then, an hour before my delivery, a text to tell me Timothy will be along shortly in a van that looks like a strawberry.
Good work Ocado, are the other supermarkets this good online?
3 Comments
I’ve used Tesco and Sainsbury’s, and they have both been perfectly fine and efficient. Although I have to say, I do like the “van will be in your area” logic - a very nice touch. Interesting they call it ‘green’, rather than simply ‘money saving’, which is presumably what it is to them. I take it there wasnt a price incentive to picking that ‘green’ slot, just a planet-saving feel-good factor??
And as an aside - if they are gonna tell you that your food is being delivered by Tim, it kind of jars that the van has the catchy name of KJ55YDN!
I think I saved a quid booking the “green” slot. So delivery was £3, how does that compare? Even if they just said it’ll save them money I’d be good with that, I like the common sense of it.
Tim was driving a strawberry of a van as promised, even if it did have a code-name.
That seems cheaper than i’ve paid for tesco and sainsburys.
Tesco gave me awful veg : (
Sainsburys accidently gave me 1 litre of vodka instead of 25cl : )