Walmart Grocery Delivery is a LIFE Saver!

This post is not sponsored by Walmart. All of my opinions are my own. I do include a referral link. Updated as of 10.23.20 with new features!

By nature I am a terrible planner. It’s not because I don’t plan. It’s because I get distracted by things that aren’t in the plan. I constantly multi-task, so I am always trying to do 10 things at once and hell that defeats the purpose of a good plan. Being a mom, I find that I feel like I need to be able to balance all things even when the reality is that I can’t. The structure of having to fill every single moment of my day is unappealing. However, as a mom of 4 where schedules collide, you have no choice but to plan. One of my most dreaded tasks, is going grocery shopping. It used to be a chance for a little quiet time, now that I have to go weekly it's a dreaded chore. Yes, I said weekly. This actually came out of the eating habits of my children. I am a member of Costco and I go there every 2 weeks faithfully. However, I realized if I planned and bought food beyond more than 1 week then my children would eat everything that was supposed to last 2 weeks, in 1 week. The struggles of a family of 6 is real.

I have been weekly shopping for a while now. I didn’t really have a solid plan around it though. Okay let me quit sugar coating it, I was winging it. Late last year in WA state, Walmart introduced the ability to pick up groceries. Meaning you would order your groceries online and then go pick them up at a designated pick up zone at the store. You don’t even have to get out the car and the service is free. Yes FREE! They will shop for you and load all of your items into your car for you, hello convenience! The cool thing is if an item isn’t in stock you have the option to allow for a substitute and even if it costs more they won’t charge you more than the item you chose. Another perk about pick up is that you can refuse the substitutions if they are not up to your standards. Also, if you are bougie on brand names then you can choose not to allow substitutes and just uncheck that option when you check out online. You can do this by item, so if there is a particular item/brand you don’t budge on you can uncheck substitutions for just that product. This is not a service you can use on the fly, there are time slots and you have to order the groceries by a certain time usually the day prior in order to pick them up at a certain time. In a sense Walmart forced me to plan.

I started off by doing pick-ups on Sunday, then Saturday. Although I normally shopped on the weekends I knew I had the opportunity to clean up the process. I studied the habits of my children and noticed by Friday night we were out of most foods and snacks. Partly because Friday is the only day of the week I don’t cook. Fend for yoself Friday is what I call it! Them fending for themselves usually leads to them eating a bunch of mess. I moved to planning our meals on Thursday afternoons in order to have the food delivered by Friday afternoon. I base all my purchases around the meals, only getting exactly what I need for the meals and then of course the basics like pop tarts, the kids favorite cookies, juice etc. This forced me to stick to the meal plan that I created because those would be all the items I had. It sounds crazy, but this is the type of structure I had to put on myself. Oh one other thing I failed to mention is they will shop all over the store for you, so if you need toothpaste, paper plates, laundry detergent…SIS you can order that too! For those of you that like “see food” meaning you see things in the store and you buy it, ordering online fixes that. For once you are able to buy only what you need and to also stay within a budget.

At the end of January this year, I received an offer to sign up for Walmart delivery. I got $10 off my grocery order and had the option to sign up for unlimited delivery for $98/year, $12.95/month or a pay per delivery fee. Listen, I hurried up and signed up. Even though pick up was working just fine, the convenience that delivery would afford me, I knew would more than pay for itself. Walmart pick up and delivery is now available across 47 states. You can find out if it is available in your city here. This was all before the pandemic. Mind you in March and April due to groceries being scarce I was only able to secure 2 pick up slots and I was watching it like a hawk. Things got back to normal around Mid May. What is so cool about this service is that when I visited my mom in Kansas for 2 months I was able to have groceries delivered to her address while we were there. If there were no delivery options I was able to pick it up. Can we say super convenient!

A key call out is that I don’t typically order dinner meat (chicken breast, drumsticks, steaks, pork chops etc.) from the delivery option. I currently buy meat from Costco in bulk every 2 weeks. I plan the meals around what wasn’t eaten the prior week. Meat that I will order are the ground beef in the roll, sandwich meat, and smoked sausage etc. Items like that. I’m not saying that you can’t order meat as well, however this works best for my family of 6. It helps me stay within my monthly grocery budget. It also saves me SO much time. More importantly in this pandemic I don’t have to be exposed to tons of people and that is important for the safety of my family. When the drivers deliver they are not allowed in your house, they always have on masks and you can choose no contact delivery where they leave the groceries on your porch. The Walmart app tracks the entire delivery process so you will be notified when your food arrives. Walmart must of heard my cries about having to go to the store to return substitutions, because now they send you an alert through the app and an email advising you to approve the substitutions. I love it! It’s perfect and I appreciate them approving the customer experience.

Update* Walmart delivery is now called W+ or Walmart+. Along with the unlimited delivery it includes member prices on fuel at Walmart & Murphy stations as well as at Sam’s club fuel centers. It also gives you the option to check out with your phone using mobile scan & go.

Now that you are well informed, if you too are looking for a way to save time, money and limit your exposure at the store you can get $10 off your first pick up order here. Remember pick up is free, you can use it one time or as often as you want. From there if you love it, you can decide if you want to move to the paid delivery services.

Happy Grocery Planning!