Catherine’s Review Blog

Ok, maybe the title is a slight exaggeration, but I shall definitely be using this website and delivery service for most of my grocery shopping from now on.

I hate grocery shopping. Its a boring, mundane, time consuming task. Due to lack of planning, I used to end up in Tescos, Dunnes or Supervalu at least 4 to 5 times a week. I had recently cut this to twice a week.

The whole rigmarole of driving to supermarket, getting trolley, loading your trolley, unloading at checkout, repacking in to bags, trolley to car, unloading into car, driving home, unloading car and then eventually unpacking groceries in your house drives me scatty. This task is made worse when you’ve a clatter of kids in tow.

So, this week, I decided to do something about it and use www.tesco.ie. I had been put off previously by lack of delivery slots available. They always seemed to be 2 or more days later than I wanted. This week, from the next day on was available so I went for it.

The website is very straight forward. You log on and click “start shopping”. The groceries are sorted into departments. You click on what and how much you want.

The only confusion I had was when goods were quantified by weight. “How many kilos of chicken breasts or cheese do I usually buy?”. But you can add a note to each item to clarify this. You can also specify what, if any, substitutes can be made if your requested item is not in stock.

The first shop, with them, does take time. But when completing subsequent shops, you can use the list of groceries you have already purchased as a starting point. For me,this is a great idea as the majority of grocery shopping is repetitive items.

The list is totted, you input your credit card details, and select your delivery time. The slots are in 2 hour intervals and the cost this week was €5.99.

I did this on Tuesday, got a confirmation email with all the items listed. The delivery truck arrived at 8pm on Thursday. The delivery guy unloaded all the goods to my kitchen counter.

The worry that the fruit/veg and other perishables delivered would be near use by dates was illfounded. They were all grand. There were a couple of substitutions made. Both of which I had the choice of accepting or not. Both were fine. There were 2 products that they hadn’t found suitable substitutes for and that was totally ok too. What do you substitute for sweet potatoes?

The amended bill was given to me, and the delivery signed for.

I hadn’t included any frozen items in the list but the deivery guy informed me that they have a refridgerated and frozen section in the trucks and so theres no problem in supplying these goods.

Overall this was a huge improvement on the personal grocery shop and it will definitely be what I’ll be doing from now on.