Review: Pod-er-ific
Posted on December 7, 2007 7 Comments
Strapped for time during the busy holiday season, car-less due to B’s studying for finals and left with bare cupboards inside and a blanket of snow outside, I finally heeded my co-workers advice and turned to Peapod for help.
I don’t know if Peapod is national, so here’s a brief description: Peapod is an online grocery store that delivers all your groceries directly to your door.
The Web site, www.peapod.com, is incredibly easy to navigate, and had a surprisingly large selection – larger than the first time I visited a few years ago. There’s a nice selection of local and organic foods, and for the foodies, there’s also gourmet aisles. I was thrilled to see they also carry some pet supplies, including the kitty litter we use, which is by far the biggest pain to buy. Also very cool: you can browse labels (for the health conscious), and you can sort items by price and unit price and use manufacturer’s coupons (for the budget conscious).
The process of buying was simple: just increase the quantity to drop it into your cart. During your shopping, certain coupons will pop up to alert you to their availability, and there are some decent sales prices, too.
How’d I do? Well, shockingly, including delivery fee and tip, I actually saved money on my order vs. my usual order from Whole Foods. Although, I didn’t buy everything organic, like I do at WF, due to the cost.
For example, organic nuts – where the ingredients are just nuts and salt – are priced a few dollars higher than Planters, which contains corn syrup, among other ingredients.
But other items, like an organic trail mix, were priced similarly to Trader Joe’s – so a good deal.
In general, I estimate that I saved about $20 using Peapod. Hard to tell, though, because I didn’t buy a lot of the Amy’s lunches and soy products I usually buy do to cost.*** But by category, here’s how I did:
- Fresh produce: Veggies all looked good. I did not buy organic, due to cost. The items I got look incredibly fresh; I couldn’t have picked them better myself.
- Meat: Here I did buy all natural… I’m concerned about hormones and antibiotics… and the prices were VERY good. In fact, the chicken was on sale. The selection delivered to me looks awesome.
- Deli: Again, a good selection of fresh cut, nitrate-free meats for a better price than WF. AND…most importantly, they had lemon hummus, which I can never find anymore at WF or Trader Joe’s for some reason.
- Dairy: Same prices on my yogurt as WF. Good prices on cage-free eggs and sale price on cheese 
- Frozen foods: Pretty wide variety in terms of pricing and selection here. Some of the stuff I bought was cheaper than usual, and some was way more expensive. You have to watch out, I guess!
- Bread: Was more expensive than what I get at WF or TJ’s. Same brands, though.
- The rest: Pretty comparable.
- Pet supplies: Kitty litter was $2.00 cheaper than PetSmart.
Delivery came today and the guy was super nice, even though he was driving in a storm. He also gave me 4 $5-off coupons to use in my next purchase.
In the end, clearly, I was very pleased with the process and I’d definitely do it again. In the time I could have spent at the grocery store today, I instead was able to use the time to research and buy my dad’s Christmas gift.
A couple things to note:
- I know this isn’t the most budget-conscious way to shop, but you really can get good deals and like I said, it ended up being cheaper than my usual trips to the store. And that was without any coupons.
- The only thing I really didn’t like was that Peapod used too many shopping bags. It was really ridiculous. But I tried to rationalize that using PP uses less gas (petrol) in the long run, because it’s one guy delivering packages on a route, rather than all of going to the grocery store and back. That logic may be stupid b/c I don’t know how far the truck came. Still…
- About Amy’s!… I wrote Amy’s and mentioned how I love their products but that everything was too expensive for me on Peapod. So Amy’s is sending me a bunch of coupons so I can continue to use their products. Score!
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December 7th, 2007 @ 1:37 pm
Just a heads up. It is illegal to directly feed hormones to chickens and hogs so you shouldn’t have to worry about that for chicken and pork. The law doesn’t apply to cattle however. Antibiotics are an issue though.
December 7th, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
I don’t know if you’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemna, but it’s great if you want to know where your food comes from and what is done to it.
December 7th, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
I’ve heard about The Omnivore. Thanks for the reminder
December 7th, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
Amy’s is really good about keeping customers and keeping them happy. Years ago I wrote them about something (no memory of all about what) and they sent me a ton of coupons, too. As a result I still love them and everything they do.
December 8th, 2007 @ 4:12 am
I love peapod, I used it when I lived in the DC area. I think it helped me stick to my list. Sometimes they would give me free samples of stuff . And they have a lot of 5 doller off your order coupons too
December 11th, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
I adore Peapod. I save so much time by placing my order online, and I believe I do much less impulse shopping, since I’m not tempted by store displays and taste-sampling. My trick for weeks when money is a little tight is to just shop the “specials” page. Their sale prices are quite comparable to the brick-and-mortars.
December 12th, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
Peapod often has coupons that let you take $5 or %10 off of the delivery fee which makes it a win win situation either way look at it. you should have received some codes with your order if not just google it and you should score some more savings. I live in downtown boston and Peapod is a must for me.