The good thing about grocery shopping at many grocery stores is the familiarity with the layout of the store. That is, you know the general location of all the items because you shop there a lot. Granted many grocery stores love to mess with you and re-arrange their stock periodically, but you can fairly quickly adapt to the new locations. One grocery store I've shopped at for a decade now, a Neighborhood Walmart Grocery, just remodeled the inside of the store replacing the old shelving and refrigeration units and they even re-arranged where same were located and how they were oriented. That was the first time in a decade that they had significantly changed the location of sale items. But it only took a visit or two to get acclimated to the new design and item locations. Unlike my mother who loved to shop and would go up and down every isle and pick up and examine nearly every item, even the ones she had no desire to buy, I'm more of the typical male shopper. I want to get in and out as quickly as possible, and preferably leave with everything I came to buy. I hate shopping for groceries, but I have to eat...

So back to the good thing about many grocery stores, that familiarity with their layout. When I'm familiar with the general location of their items, I can make my grocery list, then map out in my mind where all those items are located. So I can essentially build my grocery list and order all the items along the shortest pathways through the store. Instead of my mom's great two hour adventure in grocery shopping, I follow the ordered list and know which isles, and on which side of the isles, each item is located, so I'm in and out within 30 minutes or less and I'm leaving with two or three weeks worth of groceries. My mom, who passed away nearly three decades ago, would likely be appalled, but I bet my dad would high five me from the great beyond if he could. Okay that is a guy thing as far as getting in out of the store quickly and getting every item you need. We hate shopping, at least grocery shopping.

When grocery shopping online I cannot get in and out quickly. You would think so, but no that's not how it works. You have no isles to map out. You have to use the search box to find everything. You never know who you will buy the item from, and I'm talking about from which 3rd party vendor. You have to search through multiple listings for each item to find the best price, the preferred shipping method, the correct size, etc. You have to avoid accidentally buying a $2,000 bag of cat food. I never encounter any of that in a B&M grocery store, at least not on that scale. Now you have spent 2 to 5 minutes placing one item in your cart. You only have 30 to 40 more items to locate and buy, so get comfy because you are going to be sitting in front of the computer for a while. And what happens when the item you want is not available? More searching and researching, more time spent. Similar items are lumped together in the B&M store so if your preferred brand is out of stock it is easy to quickly grab a different brand. It is a more involved process online though.

I've tried grocery shopping online several times in the past year. I've tried using Amazon, HEB (a regional Texas grocery chain), Walmart, and at least two other regional chains. I'm always disappointed and I always seem to spend more time online trying to find my items than I would have if I had just got in the car and gone two miles to the local Super 1 Foods and shopped the old fashioned way. So far all of the online retail grocery shopping has been virtually the same-type in the item in the search box then move to the next item. This is grossly inefficient and time consuming and anything but user friendly. If the online grocery stores would build truly useful apps that allow you to build favorites lists, then shopping could be done much more quickly. But even then, on Amazon you would still have to muddle through all the choices for sizes, 3rd party vendors, and shipping. I think these grocery stores need to hire shoppers as consultants so they can develop better apps and tools to make the experience efficient and useful. As it is at current, I only buy a select few grocery items online, preferring to get most of them at a B&M. I'm still going to a B&M regardless though, as I'm never going to pay an online grocery store $15/month for the privilege of buying fresh produce and perishable items. That is insane. I would not shop at a B&M that charged like that either.