Wal-Mart Grocery

I hate Wal-Mart.

Hate. It.

In fact, right after Ryker was born they refused to honor a coupon for formula (one of the Similac checks they send in the mail…) so I stopped shopping there for like 18 months. But, their savings catcher app brought me back to the dark side and I begrudgingly started buying about half of our monthly groceries there.

I also hate grocery shopping in general. Not the meal planning and list making part, but the actual going-into-the-store-and-dealing-with-people-and-waiting-in-line part. So I was intrigued when a friend posted a video of her review of the Wal-Mart grocery pickup. She gave me a $10 referral, so I thought I’d try it out just to save $10 off my grocery bill.

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And I’m kind of in love.

The basic idea is this: you order your groceries or whatever online or on the app, schedule a time to pick it up, show up at your scheduled place and time, and a lovely Wal-Mart employee brings your groceries out to your car. It’s like magic!

I mean, what mom wants to take 2+ hours out of her already busy day to go grocery shopping? Personally, I am at work 40+ hours a week, 2 of the weekdays I’m gone from sunup to sundown, evenings & weekends are spent cooking/cleaning/bathing kids. Who in their right mind would say “no” to freeing up an hour or more on the weekend? Certainly not me.

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Here are my thoughts:
Pros:
- Saves time. Not only am I not having to actually do the shopping. I don’t have to deal with a toddler’s dawdling. I really don’t want to be the mom who is always hollering at her kid to hurry up and I try to encourage Ryker to observe and explore his surroundings and he LOVES to help… which means pretty much anything we do together automatically takes twice as long.
- Saves money because I’m not impulse buying!!!! Saving money is kind of a huge thing right now while we’re trying to save up for a new baby & my unpaid maternity leave
- I don’t have to bring my kid inside and deal with a 3 year old’s temper tantrum for whatever reason. Also, see “saves time” above.
- I don’t really have to interact with many people (totally get road rage in the aisles).
- It’s a free service for now.

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Cons:
- Not every store offers this service. The closest one to me was 30 minutes away, so I still had to spend an hour driving, plus the gas spent may cancel out my savings in the long run.
- I can’t pick out everything myself. The strawberries I got ended up having mold on them. This isn’t the shoppers fault. I would’ve probably picked the same pack of strawberries. Honestly I’m going to chalk this up to Wal-Mart’s poor produce selection. Should’ve stuck with Publix for the produce.
- I’m not sure if they take coupons.
- The popular pickup times go fast. If you’re going to do this, order your items a few days in advance to guarantee a good time.
- There’s a $30 minimum so you can’t use it for just grabbing a few items. We don’t usually do “quick trips” at Wal-Mart though so this isn’t an issue for me although it could be for some people.

Will I use it again? Probably. Especially since my life is about to get exponentially more hectic while we adjust to becoming a family of 4. Will I use it every week? Probably not… unless they expand this service to a store closer to me. But, this service has persuaded me to use Wal-Mart more often.

I’m surprised to be typing this, but good job, Wal-Mart. Now, let’s work on treating your employees better.