No downsides really. Sometimes tough to get a delivery slot. I used Whole Foods. As for produce, I haven’t had issue but Whole Foods has nice produce overall.

We use the Walmart grocery delivery, about 5 min from us. It takes about 2-3 days to get an apt and they only have half of what I order. Crazy times.

I’d check delivery schedules in your area. In some parts of New England areas it’s two weeks out right now. Don’t know how it is in Indy.

It's another set of hands touching your food + bags vs interacting near other people going your own. Both are a gamble.

We just started using Instacart, and have been pleasantly surprised with our two deliveries. It is a little more expensive overall, and they will send pictures real time of other options if one of your items is out of stock.

Appointments are getting harder to come by so you need to plan accordingly. We wipe down any fridge or freezer items upon arrival and leave the rest in the garage for 1-2 days in quarantine.

Fruit and veggies get washed with soap and water and rinsed. We've been happy with the produce selected, but both stores have a pretty good selection anyway.

I hate spending the extra money, but we'll do it for a while until the numbers get better.

GLWS (Good Luck With Shopping)!

My wife uses it with our local Aldi. No issues. They bring the groceries right to our front door. I’d definitely recommend it

Far less of a gamble than going inside the store and shopping.

I agree. They are saying they have found the virus in the air ducts within hospitals. I don’t think grocery stores have the best hvac system.

Well I'm mainly talking about just to keep from having to be around people. This shit has made me not even want to get near anyone.

My wife does pickup as opposed to delivery. My sister was doing delivery, but got annoyed with the 2h window, delivery fees and the associated tip. Order online, get an assigned parking spot and they load them into the car.

Now that the CDC is saying that primary transmission is no longer thought to be through your hands and is airborne, it's probably better to stay out of the stores.

We have used Peapod and it has always worked out great. It also saves us money not just grabbing things off the shelf we dont need.

To be honest, risk is minimal if you take basic precautions: wash your hands after accepting delivery, remove wrappings if any and discard them immediately - don't keep them in your kitchen (and wash your hands again !)

If possible have a sufficient supply of fruits and vegetables so that you can leave them for a few days in you cellar. The virus is very, very unlikely to survive many days at the surface of a fruit or vegetable. Wash them before using them (bleach is NOT recommended !)... and wash your hands again.

And... giving a tip to the delivery person won't hurt. He (she) is taking a greater risk.

We set up a table in the garage and we just leave the groceries out there for a week or maybe even longer before we bring them in and anything that we do bring in that we have to refrigerate or freeze we wipe them off with the bleach wipes. Same with mail, I spray it with lysol and leave it in the garage until the next day.

We use instacart. Saves us tons of time for a small fee.

We prefer it than going to the store currently.

Instacart so far. Appt. can be difficult, so plan ahead and keep checking, because spots open up, probably because of people cancelling.

I increase the built in tip and also tip my shopper an extra $10 when they arrive. They’re taking a risk, and it’s honestly the least I can do.

We’re only doing grocery delivery. I don’t interact, they leave on porch. I wait 1 hour before I got get. I only open bag with gloves on. I wipe everything down with sanitizer. I burn the bags in my back yard.

Disagree simply bc the person doing all your picking could already have it. Are they washing their hands frequently? Coughing or breathing on your food?

Instacart SUCKS around here. We stopped using them. You can't lock into a favorite delivery person, and there's a WIDE range of capabilities of the delivery people. Bad substitutions, no substitutions, saying stuff isn't in stock at the store when it is, the whole nine yards.

If you're going to go delivery, I'd use shipt. They let you lock on to a shopper you like so you're always getting someone you know. Seem to be a better class of delivery people, too.

But honestly, I'd get a 3M N95 mask and sterilization bags so you can sterilize and re-use the same (formerly disposable) mask per new CDC guidelines and shop yourself. If you have a list (or alexa with a list on your phone) you can get in and out quickly and it's probably a more controlled exposure experience. Hand off the food at the door to someone at home than can wipe everything down you bought, take off your clothes in the garage, put them in the wash immediately, wash your hands to the elbows thoroughly, and you're fine.

Anyone going out without a mask of some kind needs to have their head examined. I started mask protocol 2 weeks ago (up from sterilization/wipes, which started at the beginning of March). CDC FINALLY updated sterilization procedures for (formerly disposable) N95 masks so you can turn 1 mask into essentually 20+ by sterilizing the same one after each use.

Well the logic would go that you should be wiping down your foods/packages before they come in your house anyway, so unirregardless of anything, you're going to have possibly contaminated foods at your door. A delivery would eliminate all the extra interactions you personally would be encountering going to the store.

10 minutes at 6 feet with someone who has it (even if asymptomatic) and you're exposed. Social distancing is only good for very short periods.

Your food spends more time with one person at 1-3 feet for a longer time with a delivery service while they shop and pay. Yes, you wipe everything with disinfectant anyway, but the potential for contamination and a larger viral load is greater I would think.

I see what you're saying, but it also has a lot to do with the store. I went the other day and it was packed with people, and a lot of places around here shut down uscans so you have to stand in line whilst someone packs up $340.14 worth of your food. And someone was in line behind me.

Whom knows? I will tell you this, first thing I did was head to the baby section to pick my daughter up some gripe water. Literally directly in front of where I needed to be there was a couple wearing masks. I stood a good distance away but they weren't budging. Finally the guy starts coughing AND TAKES OFF HIS FUCKING MASK to do it
Hit the bricks quick, no gripe water for you!

EDIT: I also went to Lowes after that and it was business as usual, only uscans closed. Had to go to Home Depot after and it was lock down...only 50 people in a time, big Xs to stand 6 feet apart etc.

We steer away from instacart. We have run into issues with the delivery drivers stealing items from the bags. And when we searched the reviews afterwards, a lot of people had the same issues of drivers taking items from bags. Even shipt. Customer service was always a problem to deal with when we had an issue. Plus the fees slowly add up depending on what you add to your cart. Instacart isn’t worth the headache.

We stick to the ShopRite from home or Walmart online for pickup and drive up to the parking spot. Hardest part is coordinating your order in hopes to find an available time slot online for pickup.

What is gripe water?

In that circumstance, I would have just said "excuse me," got my water and split.

Lots of the store etiquette and enforcement is dependent on where you are in the country. Some are taking this much more seriously than others. Costco, target, walmart and some other stores here are limiting how many people can go into the store at once with counters at the entrance and there's 5-6ft gaps in the checkout lines. I'm considering going to level 3 this coming week, which is 3M N95 mask and cotton disposable gloves while out instead of just wipes when I get back to the car.

Keep in mind there is a whole supply chain between where the items are harvested/manufactured to where they finally end up in your hands. A lot more people end up touching each item along the way than you would think.

It's a heck of a lot easier to sanatize a potentially contaminated item, than it is to protect and sanatize yourself against being in a potentially contaminated environment.

"The next two weeks are extraordinarily important," said Birx. "This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the pharmacy, but doing everything you can to keep your family and your friends safe and that means everybody doing the six-feet distancing, washing their hands."

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/04/826741317/federal-government-implements-relief-as-nation-reels-from-coronavirus-pandemic

I think it's safe to go to the grocery if you do curbside pickup.

Until there is a vaccine nothing we do is completely safe. All we can hope for is to reduce the number of infections to a manageable amount and not overwhelm our healthcare system.

ALL of the ideas in this thread are helpful though, because none of them are business as usual, and that is all going to help.

I have been tipping everyone extremely well though, because I don't think anyone would be working right now for next to no money if they didn't have to. The usual pay rates are built on pre-pandemic economy.

It gets rid of hiccups.

I'm already there.

You can do that for free with a sippy cup or bottle and plain water (or juice in a pinch). Just gently pinch their nose closed as they drink. You only need about 5 seconds of uninterrupted drinking with nose plugged for it to clear hiccups. It's harder with non-babies because sometimes they object to the nose plugging, so it may take a few tries, but it works 100% of the time unless you have an underlying medical problem (the people that have non-stop hiccups).

Works for adults, too, usually on the first try, especially if you slowly drink an entire 8oz while you plug your nose.

For adults, eat a spoonful of peanut butter. Works every time and eating a spoonful of PB is just awesome anyway.

Just finished up my weekly store venture earlier. I may look into delivery going forward, but much prefer getting my own stuff.

Delivery is much safer. I cant find any mask anywhere so if never go in a crowded store. I did go into a dollar store today but there was only a couple of people in there. I zipped in and right back out as quick as I could.

Unirregardless is a new word to me. Irregardless isn’t a word. In Unirregardless a word?

It's been going strong for a decade or two.

Regardless is a word. Irregardless is not.

I don't think I use either of them.

Merriam-Webster disagrees:

"Irregardless was popularized in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its increasingly widespread spoken use called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose."

It's not a FAVORED nor recommended word for print, but it IS a word.

Lucky enough to be near a Whole Foods. Order on Amazon Prime. Free delivery. I'm tipping the driver's big time
Dropped on your porch - no contact

Only issue is finding a delivery window. It's so popular that most times when you check out there are no time slot available for delivery
Just leave it in your cart and check back often to find one that opens up

After delivery, I put my mask on, head out to open the bags on porch (toss them)
Move groceries inside and wipe down exterior packaging and put it away

Last night the driver pulled in around 10pm

IMG_7661 (resized).jpg

I've put my first order on Instacart. I got stuff from Costco, I always shop there so I know the price of my usual groceries. Instacart adds a markup of nearly 20% on the listed price, then delivery fees on top, it's a bit rough. I'll probably won't use them once the confinement is over.

My mom continues to pay her M-W-F home care aide (who mostly helped her get in and out of the car and drove her places, plus laundry, some light cleaning and help with hygiene and meal prep) even though she no longer lets her in the house (mom has lost good helpers in the past when leaving town for more than a few days since they will take hours at another house to fill the gap in their pay).

Now helper does a Costco and normal grocery store run once a week and leaves the bags on the porch. She already knows what mom likes from shopping together for several months and has a night job as a stocker at a grocery store anyway, so no additional exposure risk for her.