I shop at Meijer. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a store which resembles a Super Wal Mart. This month they announced that they are partnering with another company called Shipt, to offer a service where the user can order groceries from home, and in as little as an hour one of the company’s shoppers will go to Meijer, collect all the items the user ordered, and deliver them to the user’s home.
Evidently the cost is $99 a year (or $14 a month for those who are bad at math), and as long as your grocery orders are always over $35, delivery is free (if you don’t tip). However, there is also the fact (not on their home page, but buried in their FAQ) that the price of each item you order is about 12.5% more than what you would pay in the store.
Their website says “Shipt prices will vary slightly from in-store prices to help cover the costs of picking, packing and processing. Our members can expect to pay about $5 more using Shipt than they would on a $35 order purchased in the store themselves. For example, a loaf of Wonderbread costs $2.29 in the store and $2.59 to have it delivered to your door using Shipt. Our members are happy to pay the extra $.30 for the convenience and time saved!”
So in short, you can now pay $99 a year to get your groceries delivered directly to your house. But you will pay 12.5% more for the privilege. Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you normally have a food budget of $500 per month. That means you pay $6000 annually for groceries. With the delivery and higher cost of each item added in, that same amount of groceries will now cost you just over $70 more per month, or about $850 more per year with a new cost of $6850 annually.
Is it worth $70 per month for you to avoid going to the grocery store? Not for me personally, but I can understand how many would like this service. The good news about that is that if there are many who join the service, it will create a bunch of jobs for
people willing to go grocery shopping for someone else’s food. According to the reports from the website from people who currently work for them in other markets, their shoppers make between $15 and $25 per hour (plus tips), and after several trips, they just know where everything is in the store so they get more efficient each day. The other incentive to work for the company is that the pay is comparable to being an Uber driver, but without the weirdness of having total strangers ride in your car. It might be a good part-time job to bring in added income.Will I use their company? Probably not. Will I work for their company at some point? Possibly.
Words of Truth 