WSJ shops online grocery options

by Nicole Weston, Posted Apr 7th 2006 @ 11:03AM

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal's Cranky Consumer column went grocery shopping - online. Many grocery stores now offer the option of shopping online, following in the footsteps of companies that sell groceries online, like Freshdirect and Peapod, but have no retail stores. To take full advantage of the retail location and see how the process worked, the WSJ opted to order online and pickup in-store from 2 national and 3 local supermarkets: Albertson's, Pathmark, Sam's Club, ShopRite and Waldbaum's.

The products at each store were generally found to be of good quality, though a few items were closer to their expiration date than the WSJ might ordinarily have selected. All of the stores took care to ensure that frozen and refrigerated goods were kept at appropriate temperatures until the very minute of pickup and some even had dedicated checkout lines for online shoppers. But none of the stores were entirely without problems.

Albertson's website was slow and made ordering time consuming. Sam's Club's website didn't save the shopping cart long enough to complete the order - twice. Pathmark did not have very many photos on their site and Waldbaum's had organizational problems. The ShopRite order had several errors during checkout, including missing items.

The Cranky Consumer's conclusion? Shopping for groceries online shows promise, but it doesn't really outweigh the benefits of going to the store yourself. Unless you're lucky enough to get a shopper who picks out bananas at the exact stage of ripeness you like, you might just be better off doing the shopping yourself for the time being.

Filed Under: Newspapers, Stores & Shopping
Tags: Albertson's, delivery, east coast, grocery, grocery shopping, market, online, Pathmark, Sam's Club, shopping, ShopRite, stores, stores-and-shopping, test, Waldbaum's, wall street journal