Grocery shopping isn\u2019t\u00a0what it used to be\u2014and\u00a0that\u2019s some \u201cdisruption\u201d we can stand by. There are more than\u00a050 online grocery retailers\u00a0and\u00a0100 meal delivery services\u00a0ready to pluck an avocado or tangerine just for you and deliver straight to your sofa. No more arctic freezer aisles, epic lines, or parking lot anxiety.\u00a0Market researchers predict that the number of online grocery retailers\u00a0will\u00a0increase tenfold over the next five years.<\/p>\n
With this shift toward\u00a0convenience, of course, comes some unexpected\u00a0spending traps. You would think buying online would be smarter and more strategic: You click on the things you want\u00a0and ignore the things you don\u2019t. You can\u2019t fall prey to those classic grocery store gimmicks like freshly baked bread or\u00a0oversized carts to mess with your mind. Who hasn\u2019t made the mistake of walking into a grocery store hungry and walking out with a cart full of things, confused about why you bought them in the first place?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Buying food online poses different kinds of risks. The impulse to go to Amazon or Peapod usually strikes\u00a0when you\u2019re\u00a0hungry. And, not surprisingly, when shopping while Netflix is paused in the background, you\u2019re more inclined to buy crappy snacks\u00a0like crackers, popcorn, chips, or pretzels with abandon\u2014who\u2019s watching you?\u00a0A recent\u00a0study from Nielsen found that people are five percent more likely to impulse buy online versus in a brick and mortar store. What\u2019s more, we\u2019re willing to limit quality and choice: We\u2019re relying on someone else to pick which bunch of bananas is the ripest. With most online interfaces, you\u2019re potentially\u00a0less likely to comparison shop and study prices and labels as you might in real life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With convenience comes cost\u2014but just how much might surprise you. On average, groceries online cost 25 percent more than those in a store. Peapod groceries, for example, are about six percent higher than average and groceries on Instacart are on average between 15 and 23 percent higher than store prices.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Of course, these premiums do not include tax or the extra cost of shipping, which can add an additional\u00a0$5.00 to $15.00 to your bill.<\/p>\n Meal delivery services are obviously more of a luxury\u2014but the cost\u00a0per meal markup is accordingly steep. For Blue Apron\u2019s chicken fettuccine, the per-portion cost is $4.88 from a grocery store versus $9.99 from the service. Plated\u2019s Vietnamese-style \u201cshaking beef\u201d\u00a0costs $12.00 for a recipe that could be replicated for $5.10 per portion. Blue Apron, Green Chef, HelloFresh, Plated, and Purple Carrot each come with nearly double the markup.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There are still plenty of people who leave the house\u00a0for groceries; only about 8 percent of U.S. shoppers buy online, but most of those consumers are under 40 and\u00a0the trend is expected to grow. Whether or not our paradigms continue to shift toward\u00a0convenience, there is one old school holdover worth keeping: writing a list and sticking to it. There\u2019s even a website devoted to archiving the humble grocery list as a work of art.<\/p>\n Image sourced from Flickr<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Grocery shopping isn\u2019t\u00a0what it used to be\u2014and\u00a0that\u2019s some \u201cdisruption\u201d we can stand by. There are more than\u00a050 online grocery retailers\u00a0and\u00a0100 meal delivery services\u00a0ready to pluck an avocado or tangerine just for you and deliver straight to your sofa. No more arctic freezer aisles, epic lines, or parking lot anxiety.\u00a0Market researchers predict that the number of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}