First, let me explain to those of you who are not familiar with this concept. The customer goes to the 'Click It' website to register, then weekly, or however often you wish, you type in what items you want to purchase. As you add to your cart, the item appears with the amount. There are digital coupons to use, just as you used the old paper coupons. Also, there is a special section to write specifically what you want for your produce, such as 2 bananas that are not overly ripe. Perhaps, from the deli department you want your 1/2 pound of black forest ham sliced very thinly. There is even a box to click that you want no substitutions used if they are out of stock for your brand of peanut butter or whatever else you are particular about.
The next step is to check out, review your list and put in your payment information, along with the time you will be at their Click List parking spots to pick up your order. It is set up in hour increments. When you arrive, you call on your cell phone, tell them your name and just like magic, within 5 minutes someone is out to your car with your groceries. The employee reviews anything that was out of stock and loads up your trunk.
Now I ask you...how easy is that? The only thing that would be easier is if they actually delivered it to your house and brought them in to your kitchen. I can take over from there because I am a bit OCD on where the items belong on the shelves and fridge.
No longer is going to the grocery time consuming. The things that come to my mind when I think of how we used to spend about two hours (driving to the store, shopping in the store, checking out, loading the car, driving home and unloading the car)! It is a quick and painless errand now.
I have a very loving husband who would want to go up and down every aisle just in case he saw something that he thought we were out of and needed. This is how we sometimes ended up with 4 jars of light mayonnaise in the pantry, etc. Our weekly bills are now one half to three quarters lower than ever before. There is now space on the shelves in the pantry.
If we shopped on Saturdays, we had to deal with the crowds and long lines. Parking was a nightmare. Those high ceilings and terrible fluorescent lighting just added to the feeling of my personal space being invaded. If that was not bad enough, I felt like other shoppers, as well as the cashier judged what we were buying based on how they stared in our carts and then leered at us. Even some bold cashiers would ask us what we would do with ginger or bleu cheese olives.
Is there a rule for all grocery stores to rearrange their merchandise every few months or so? Just as soon as we seemed to know where to find everything that we needed or wanted -- BOOM! The manager had his workers move items, I am sure it was to make the shoppers spend more by going up and down searching for what they need, yet stopping here and there to pick up something that was not even on their list.
When our son worked in high school at a grocery store, they spent time training him. Baggers today seem to throw whatever all together in the bags. Click List baggers actually must put refrigerated items together, frozen items together, etc. This is due to shopping for it in advance of the customer arriving, they must store it in the appropriate locations until the customer arrives. Flagship stores were popular at the time he worked in one so the baggers had to take the groceries out to the car and load them for each customer. He made some very good tip money.
The stores seemed to be friendlier and more fun to shop in back in the day. When you walked through the produce section the mist that came sprinkling out on the veggies automatically made the tune of "Singing in the Rain" come on. This is how you started your shopping. By the time the customer reached the Dairy section, auto-motion caused a rooster to cock-a-doodle-do at the egg section and a cow to mooooooo when the door was opened to get a gallon of milk out.
Those were the days. Well, now I am saying these are the days. Just Click It! The marketing idea is clever. Each customer gets the first four orders without a fee charge. After that it costs $4.95 for this service. It is a fee well worth it. Even with that fee added on, our grocery bills are slashed. On the up side, every couple of weeks there are free items or the fee is waived if you download it to your account.
This will never be the two of us again!
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