I shared that Peapod.com, the online grocery shopping and delivery service, recently expanded into NYC’s five boroughs in my last post. The site’s public relations company invited me to test out their service in Queens, share a Peapod NYC review sharing my thoughts with you AND give away a $100 gift card to Peapod.com to one lucky Mom in the City reader.
My thoughts about Peapod.com
Convenience: Saving time is important to me, so I automatically like the premise of spending less time grocery shopping by using an online shopping and delivery service. It took me less than half an hour to fill out my virtual grocery cart and check out online on Peapod.com. You also have the option of using their mobile app to shop. After shopping, I selected my delivery time frame for the next day and waited for my groceries to be delivered. Instead of having your groceries delivered, you could choose the pick-up service option. That defeats the purpose of shopping online for me though, so I would never use that…much like I never use “ship to store” options for online retail shopping!) Overall, it was a really easy, user-friendly process.
While saving time is important, prices and quality of the food are more important (to me) when it comes to grocery shopping…
Price: The prices were great/comparable to those in my local grocery stores. I like that I can see all of their weekly specials on a page of the site, that they have relevant Coupons.com coupons available to be printed out and applied to your order and that you can connect your Stop & Shop rewards account to your Peapod account. Peapod also doubles manufacturers’ coupons and has several good quality store (read as “less expensive”) brands like Nature’s Promise and Simply Enjoy.
Quality: Overall, I was impressed by the quality and availability of my desired groceries. Everything was fresh and all of the brands that we normally buy in our local stores were available. They even had Aidells Pork Sausage Smoked Cajun Style Andouille (which my family loves but is rarely available in local stores) in stock. They also have a “New York’s Best” section where you can order local specials. The only thing that I found lacking was ethnic spices (like for my curried chicken and jerk chicken recipes). Then again, most of my local grocers don’t carry them either! Oh well…
Summary: I am open about the fact that I don’t normally do the grocery shopping at my home…my husband Reggie does. We shopped together as a family in the past at various local stores but Reggie got tired of the boys and I slowing him down. We were tough. The kids would always want to add something that was not on the grocery list to the cart. Meanwhile, I like to look at all the labels for ingredients and compare costs on everything. Now, I make the grocery list and Reggie picks everything up at the store. If it were not for this fact, I would consider being a regular Peapod customer. I will still use the service on weekends when our family schedule is crazy packed though. For instance, Reggie needed to work one weekend after I used the Peapod service so I spent my own money (the greatest test of a product/service) on Peapod.com to have our weekly groceries delivered. I don’t have a problem paying a little extra (delivery charges and tipping) for convenience!
The Giveaway
As I mentioned, I am hosting a reader giveaway of a $100 Peapod gift card. Please note that the winner must live in one of the 5 NYC boroughs. To enter to win, please share your biggest NYC grocery shopping frustration in the comment section below or by sending an email with “Peapod NYC” in the Subject line to giveaways@mominthecity.com. A winner will be chosen on June 5th at noon.
For additional entries (just make an additional comment for each thing that you do), you can follow Peapod’s social channels:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeapodDelivers
- Twitter: @PeapodDelivers
- Instagram: @Peapoddelivers
Good luck!