Where I live in Portland, I’ve used Amazon Prime Now to get groceries delivered from New Seasons Market, a local Whole-Foods-type chain.

New Seasons doesn’t partner with Instacart, which I also use. Whole Foods does.

Because of the buyout, I assume that Whole Foods will someday soon deliver via Amazon.

Where does that leave New Seasons?

+++

Ordering groceries online has its ups and downs. For the most part it’s great: quick, convenient, and because I don’t have a car–incredibly less cumbersome.

But you pay for it in money (fees, tips) and also in lack of choice or care. The Anon shopping for you doesn’t have any skin in the game, so to speak, about picking the best produce and certainly doesn’t have your particular dietary requirements in mind when swapping out replacements.

For instance, a while back I was not eating dairy, soy, and sugar, but occasionally would like a 100% dark bar of chocolate. I added one to my Instacart order, but the brand I had picked (and researched online to make sure that all the ingredients were legal for me) was out of stock–the brand that the shopper chose as a replacement was sugar-free, but had dairy.

No incentive for them to care.

Or, for instance, the steak that I had yesterday was probably 1.75 pounds but came with a “sidecar” steak that’s about a half-inch thick–because I had ordered 2 pounds of steak. Nobody thought to get two one-pound steaks?

The best experience I’ve had with grocery delivery has actually been ordering directly through Safeway’s website. The quality of the produce and meat that I got through them was by far superior, but the delivery fees were higher. I suspect that this is because Safeway was not using a “gig” setup with random Contractor Anons doing the work.

Safeway didn’t let you tip the delivery guy.