Have we discussed mail-order meals?
 

I wanted to order Mom a week of meals as a Christmas present, so I started just trying to see who ships here, and it seems like everyone does, plus some of them offer discounts for public servants through ID.me, which is how I log into the VA.
SunBasket offers a military discount through GovX.
I didn't sign up with GovX just to see what the discount was.
One of them had a student discount, but only a student discount.
Freshly only provides single servings--for $10 each.
I don't know about other discounts. I have Capital One and Honey installed, but the one time that I clicked on the button to search coupon codes it got me a worse deal.
Many of these offer flat discounts, so a small weekly plan is disproportionately cheaper than larger ones.

These are the best prices-per-serving, without looking for additional deals:
SunBasket wants $147.68 for 12 servings.
HelloFresh wants $75.52 for 24 servings.
Blue Apron wants $12.96 for your first 4 servings.
EveryPlate wants $17.88 for 12 servings.

They show you what they are sending you next, but one said they were sending my first box on December 23rd, and I couldn't change it.
We are driving down for Christmas. We can't wait until 2000!
I tried to sign up for the cheapest three, they just wanted a couple dollars per serving.

For one I was able to click on the second week and cancel, but for the other two I couldn't approve the first week and then when I canceled it canceled everything.

I tried to go back and just get the one week, but I needed to reset my password and enter my credit card information again.

I don't know which one is still supposed to send us food.

Hello Fresh shows up in my bank activity, but that may change.

What's the price per calorie?

I find these meal deliveries like to send thin green beans and whole potatoes. That "food" is basically free. Then you still have to season it with your own stuff and add butter. Well the butter is the whole meal, so they sent nothing in a ton of packing material. You think you're getting a heap of food, and then realize that less than half the volume is actual food. I've had a few of these meal deliveries given by friends (who used coupons). Does anyone buy this stuff without the "deals"?

During Covid, Safeway started offering to pick and bag your groceries and deliver to the trunk of your vehicle for free. Safeway is the medium priced grocer here, so we rarely go there, but having someone else pick the groceries is nice. Winco (Waremart) is the "low cost price leader". Roth's is expensive. Zero lines there because there are fewer customers and plenty of checkers.

I don't have any idea.

We have Safeway and Walmart. I buy stuff from Walmart wherever I can because it always seems cheaper, but one time Mom gave me her shopping list, I looked up everything in the app, and then I bought it from Walmart.

It cost 10¢ more and I didn't get any fuel points.

I picked up orders inside of Walmart years ago. It turned out that they didn't come from the store's inventory, they were mailed from an actual warehouse.

Once the site showed a flash drive for half what they asked in-store. I showed an employee and, without looking, he said it was different.
"It has the same UPC code!"
"No, it's different."
"You didn't even look!"

I don't enjoy shopping--or cooking--as much as Mom, but when I couldn't get Walmart to deliver in a timely manner I had them bring it out to my car once or twice.

There was no way that it would have taken as long for me to run in and grab it myself.

Never again.

Mom acts like it is the end of the world when I use self-checkout.
"Why? I'm the best-looking cashier."

When I do get in line with a human they don't talk to me half the time.

What's the point?

She doesn't really trust me to shop for her. I think she just does it so she can criticize me.

She is never going to trust a stranger and how much better would she feel complaining about a faceless stranger?

Safeway gets competitive with coupons, so they're more expensive for those who have enough cash to not push buttons in an app to save money. No complaints at my store with their trunk delivery.

Had a recent experience at Walmart where I was trying to save money by ordering online for an electronic device with a 10 year life. 1st order was cancelled. 2nd order only had 1 out of 3 I wanted. 3rd order pretty far away fulfilled my full order with stock from 2018, meaning it had half the usable life. I asked if how to exchange the stale stock with new stuff, and they said I could only return / repurchase, except the store could not match their online price.

Walmart has been a soup nazi with me on other things too. No love for them, but I haven't kicked them out of the family yet.

Self-checkout is often faster, so it's my go-to now. I talk to cashiers regardless if they initiate. Some are quirky and talk about weird things, but those are kinda my people. Usually I get a good quick conversation even from the ones just trying to run the time out of the clock.

Quoth DDG:
OTOH

I walk a block to a Grocery Outlet; cost competitive with Winco but less walking than inside the store and I don't have to drive.

Is Patriot Food Supply supposed to be a local business? All that I see are ads for a site.

Gross-Out is the way to go for sure. Nice that it's so close by.

When I first started shopping there was right after Y2K, and they had food packed in Nitrogen. ....the first few visits, then it was all gone. If I'd known then what I do know now, I'd have made a bulk purchase.

That was the point of the post -- farmer's markets vs food shipped in from who-knows-where.

Only food I trust for 22+ years is probably honey. Maybe dried beans or rice if they are completely dry and there's no oxygen.

I've had rancid Mountain House dehydrated food, presumably from oxygen degrading it. Maybe the packaging was compromised at some point. Not fun choking that junk down when it's the only thing you packed and you've just set up snow camp after snowshoeing to the top of a mountain.

If I were a prepper, I'd probably store honey as a tradeable commodity, along with enough food to get through 1 year. That way if disaster strikes in the summer, you've got enough time to plant food in the spring and harvest the following summer. No real point in holding more than 1 year in reserve.

The proper way to prep is to have an inventory of food that keeps for a couple years, and take a first in first out approach to consuming it, and then replacing what is consumed. You don't want to hope your 25 year old food is ok, you want to cycle through it so that's never an issue.

At that point you probably have other problems. :eek: