Another suggestion, which I have not tested yet personally, would be to look up small grocers in your area. If you're willing to drive to pick up your shopping, a small grocer may be willing to prepick your order and have it ready for you in the parking lot without an intermediary.
A third option would be to check for local milkman deliveries, since many of them deliver more than just milk. A quick search for the Bay Area brings up "Bay Area Milkman" and "Milkman SF". Again, haven't tried them so can't vouch for them, but I'm keeping similar options in my own back pocket if/when we need them.
I can't get a delivery window at all in Instacart right now. I can't get pickup of delivery from any grocery store in northern New Jersey right now.
I don't know if either of my other suggestions are of any use to you, but I genuinely wish you luck in your search.
This is what I did. A small, upscale grocery near me started offering curbside pickup: you send in an order in the morning, get called to arrange payment in the afternoon, drive there the same day, and they drop off your groceries at your car. Worked perfectly. Yum.
Indeed, prominently advertised on their website: https://www.rosewoodmarket.com/grocery-curbside-pickup/
Unfortunately this is in a different state. But maybe Mountain View/Palo Alto/Sunnyvale/etc. has something similar? Where do all the vegans and serious foodies shop? I'd try there.
You might consider making tiers of food. And maybe get a standup freezer if you have the space/budget:
Tier 1: fast perishable fruits/vegetables, e.g. bananas. You buy these in quantity at the store, but accept you’ll run out between trips Tier 2: root vegetables and other long lasting produce. You buy in quantity and store in a cool, dark place. Should last a while Tier 3: frozen meat, frozen nuts, frozen vegetables. Frozen sliced bread Tier 4: canned fish, canned fruit, canned vegetables. Canned meat/jerky
I’m Canadian. My grandma had a root cellar in the basement. Tier 1 was basically out of the question every winter for a portion of her life
You more or less arrange things as a tradeoff between tier 1, and trips to the store, which are both costly and increase exposure odds.
You also then keep checking all delivery options and look for alternate qaya to keep tier up. But tiers 2 and 3 are fairly decent.
There’s also bulk meal cooking + freezing after a store run. This is where the freezer comes in handy again.
If you have a backyard, also a good time to experiment with gardening.
It sounds like you’re already doing a good job of having emergency stockpiles. Am hopeful this might give you some more ideas for how to make the long term stockpile more palatable in between orders.
I stop by costco once every two weeks, and would not mind picking up some stuff for you.
Like another commenter mentioned, nextdoor is fairly decent for getting help, you can find highschoolers doing runs for their neighbors.
Small side note: it's kind of hard finding some staples - toilet paper, eggs, etc, so make sure you are aware of it.
My only source is my mom though, you might want to double-check this claim
1.https://books.google.com/books?id=64FJDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT144&lpg=...
2.https://books.google.com/books?id=vFNpcwXlDT8C&pg=PA37&lpg=P...
Here are a couple more citations that have more data behind them, if somebody wants to dig into it (and has the journal access):
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030881469... * https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-5975-7_... * https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.2825
We haven't tried at very odd hours as you suggest; we'll give it a try, thank you.
* Whole Foods (for delivery) releases slots at midnight. This is pretty obvious, because you'll actually get what is basically a, "rate limiting" dialog page if you don't start checkout successfully. The site is getting slammed THAT hard. So for 2-3 minutes, hope you actually can get to the page to confirm placing the order. Those slots go FAST (< 5 minutes).
* Amazon Fresh seems to start releasing slots at 12:30AM. These seem fairly easy to get at release. No rate-limiting page for checkout.
* Instacart seems to have a "semi-hold" for orders in carts that aren't yet confirmed orders. I can watch delivery slots for the next 2 weeks disappear until none remain. But at midnight, they become wide open as soon as 3-4 days out. If you're on point, you can get one early in the day, where stock is likely good, or late in the day, where places like ALDI will have replenished the shelves since the rush is before noon.
Amazon (Whole Foods and Fresh) seem to only hold items in a cart so long if you've not purchased. I've not nailed it down yet, but it's measured in "hours" (not sure of the number), not days. My recommendation is to have a firm list and start filling your cart 60-90 minutes before the above times. That seems to get everything committed in the order 100% of the time.
If you're trying to stock up to not have to go out for a good while, consider a, "defense in depth" strategy. Place a Whole Foods order, place a Fresh order, place an Instacart order. Stagger them by a few days. If something comes in the first two orders, remove it from the Instacart order. You may be able to cancel the Instacart order several days in advance, and still have gotten basically everything.
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I'm done buying groceries online for a long while, so rather someone who could use it have the knowledge I learned through far too much effort trying to figure out how the black boxes worked. Legitimately felt like I was routing a speedrun for a grocery video game to get a world record.
https://www.smartfoodservice.com/locations/store/san-jose-57...
Looks like there's a click-and-carry option, but no deliveries unless you Instacart.
Also, this may depend on your financial situation, but if you can, don't make small orders; make large orders less often. (This is true all the time, but it's especially true right now.) Then, even if you have to drive a long distance for a pickup or pay a larger delivery fee, you don't have to do it as often.
Unfortunately most online things are overwhelmed. They don't have enough shoppers. You can keep checking for a slot opening up, but its a challenge and hard to plan for. Are you specifically looking for fresh items, or are there particular things you need?
Staples are usually available, and you can sometimes get them from smaller vendors online. At least those you can plan ahead for a future delivery. For some staples I've had luck with Target and random online (usually specialty/gourmet) sellers.
For fresh items, its harder -- either get lucky with online or go =/. You can try the smaller chains as they are lower foot traffic or in some cases are better at rate limiting customers. I've had luck with Ava's downtown (they also have early hours for senior and/or immunocompromised). Nijiya is rate limiting, as is Trader Joes (expect 30+ min line though). Nob Hill has been OK, they also have special pre-packaged boxes for seniors and at risk customers. They are first come/first serve, and have mixes of staples/fresh foods. They say they're available via e-cart as well, but I haven't tried. I've had to book Nob Hill ~1 week ahead (and didn't get everything). Dittmer's is also rate limiting (but sounds like you're good on meats).
As a last resort -- the MV farmer's market opens an early for seniors and immunocompromised (so either 8 or 8:30, I can't remember and its not listed online). I've been ~9 and its busier than I'd like. They're trying to enforce line spacing and do limit number of people in booths. Some booths only sell pre-bagged items held behind the counter (e.g. apples from Rainbow).
As a last resort -- maybe a shared grocery need list with friends/neighbors? Someone can pick up an extra item or two when they're out. We've been doing that at times and following usual safety procedures afterward.
Take care!
I get why stores would do this, but unless there are significantly fewer people in the store, could putting these people in one place actually be a bad idea? Is there any good data backing this up?
For other people who are also in a similar scenario: NextDoor and local FB groups are great for this.
(They do have warnings on every product now about potentially being out of stock, but so far, they've been able to fulfill every order I've made.)
Here is a list of CSAs and farms near mountain view: https://www.localharvest.org/search.jsp?map=1&lat=37.412895&...
Try the Farmstead app: https://www.farmsteadapp.com/
Some stores are near you on Mercato: https://www.mercato.com/
Check grocery stores near you on Yelp; call them to see if they deliver, I'm sure some do (Safeway definitely used to): https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=groceries&find_loc=mou...
Grocery On Wheels seems to prioritize deliveries to senior citizens, they may also make an exception for the immunocompromised: https://www.groceryonwheels.org/
You should also check the news, google and call any wholesale food distributors nearby you, the ones that deliver to restaurants. Near me they have been delivering boxes full of fresh food to residences for very low prices, something like $35 a box.
Basically, abandon the idea of national chains, look for local places. In rural areas this is nearly impossible; near and in big cities, there are tons of options. And don't forget to look for non-white-owned businesses - but you might have to actually ask someone nearby, as they don't always advertise on Google.
[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03/food-safety-and-coronavi...
We were able to hire our housekeeper to do grocery shopping for us.
Housekeepers; Pet sitters; more generally, there's a lot of people out of work right now, connect with them and you'll find someone who will help with your shopping.
Many are just using gloves or masks as a talisman to ward off the corona but not appreciating how these PPE items, when used poorly, are likely worse than having no PPE, a few items for sanitizing, and awareness.
If you won't use them now, when will you? Are we talking days, weeks or months?
Basically, we don't consider our current situation an emergency yet.
I'm pretty much fine with it as long as I think it's reasonable that I won't deplete more than some fraction of it before I can top it off.
We've only been able to get pretty small orders for a few weeks.
We incorrectly focused too heavily on building up the (not so tasty/suitable for 'normal' consumption) emergency supplies as the crisis was unfolding.
https://zeroshop.co/ - Limited selection but good availability
Can't speak to if they deliver to you, but both do in Menlo Park.
- Subscribe to meal kit services like HelloFresh or Blue Apron (or both).
- Buy from other mail order grocers like Imperfect Foods, Omaha Steaks, etc.
- Hire someone with TaskRabbit to do the shopping for you, particularly from grocers that don't deliver (i.e. Trader Joe's, smaller specialty grocers, etc.).
> TaskRabbit
I had not considered that, we'll take a look. Thanks!
Another option are restaurant deliveries. Those are easy to get (they're happy to get the orders!). Up to you how you feel about the risk, but all the experts I've read say you can reduce the danger there to something comparable to grocery delivery (mainly to discard the original packages and you can also reheat the food).
Lastly there are many people on nextdoor in your community that will help out with shopping as a good gesture. You just reimburse them the cost of what they bought for you.
I have been able to place pick up orders with Nob Hill Foods for two weeks out (delivery has not been available lately).
One of my husband’s colleagues has had good luck with Draeger’s via Instacart (he said same day!).
If you make an Amazon Fresh cart and then refresh the page where you select your delivery window a lot between 9 pm and 12 am you can sometimes catch the new batch of delivery windows being released. For most Amazon Fresh warehouses they are released at midnight, but it is controlled by the local warehouse, and ours releases the new slots at random times in the evening. When I can get a slot Amazon fresh is my favorite—good selection and 90% of what I order actually arrives, which is great.
My husband also mentioned a friend successfully having toilet paper delivered from Home Depot.
There are some CSAs that target south bay that might work for you. These support farms and you get a strong assurance that you will have food every week.
We also have enough rice and beans in our house that we can probably go for about a month without groceries. Make sure you have rice and beans.
Tender greens is also delivering grocery boxes: https://www.tendergreens.com/blog/002020-grocery-boxes
I would also try smaller stores on Instacart.
Finally there are several groups doing shopping for people like you, my Nextdoor feed has them posting regularly.
It takes a bit to find an open slot for their Recurring Orders, but since we've gotten one they haven't let us down. It's the one-off order slots that don't exist.
Stock up on non-perishable grains, pasta, tomato sauce and canned fish. And I really mean stock up – at least 3-4 weeks worth of meals.
Not in the SF Bay Area, but WF through the Amazon app is still what's been working for us, though I have to log in repeatedly to find a delivery window available...
We do have a fair amount of such emergency supplies, primarily in the form of protein bars, but a lot of other things as well. We would rather leave those be until (and if) there's an actual legit emergency for us to face.
I think the Whole Foods via Amazon is still working, it's just extremely over-used in the bay area, so the orders we actually manage to get through are very small.
No disagreement; remember, we consider every box that arrives as potentially life threatening. And we're quite aware of the local, national and global scope and impact.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CSAS-THAT-DELIVER-TO-...
When you 'check through the day', can you say roughly how many times you are checking? Thanks!
So far, I've had a better experience with Amazon Fresh than with Instacart (King Soopers/Kroger) due to 1) the ability to "call dibs" on items instead of waiting for the shopper to see there's no stock and struggle to find a replacement, and 2) the quick 1-2 day delivery (but maybe I've just gotten lucky). On the other hand, lots of stuff is out of stock which makes shopping challenging.
We also put in an Amazon Pantry order yesterday. Expected delivery: April 26! :O
One other option you might try - if you don't have any relatives nearby that can help, community groups on Facebook and church groups in your area may be delivering groceries to residents in need. Get on a couple of neighborhood/church mailing lists and see what's available.
I only mentioned DSA because I'm member of the national org, but there are probably many other organizations doing similar work. Please be safe and stay healthy! Good luck!
Edit: Just want to emphasize to people in a similar situation, that the key words to search for are "Mutual Aid" on google, facebook, and twitter if you don't know someone already connected to an organization. Many of these orgs are also looking for volunteers.
My wife, who is in her 50s, is immunocompromised, and she also has a history of fast escalating and difficult to treat respiratory problems. We are and have been (for the past 32 days) treating this bug very carefully. If she catches it, she has a very good chance of not surviving it.
Our son and I are at less risk, but we can easily bring this bug home.
We've been having more and more trouble getting food. We have a fair quantity of emergency supplies, but we'd rather not tap into those.
At first it was the various delivery options: instacart, various others, but they became less usable. Early last week we started doing Amazon Prime Now, which allowed us to place and pay for orders at Whole Foods, then wait in the parking lot for them to put the orders in our trunk.
Over the past few days, this has gotten less viable. We'd find ourselves driving 50 miles to pickup a $30 order.
So, we're open to suggestions. We live in Mountain View, the SF Bay Area.
We have been able to buy quite a bit of chicken and beef, and we have a 50 pound bag of flour coming in, so we're certainly not in any danger of starvation.
It's just kind of a low-grade anxiety that kind of sucks.
Thanks!
PS: We have a pretty rigorous decontamination process that everything goes through before it comes into the house, so we feel pretty good about that.