Summary: The last time I got groceries, it only happened after a solid seven days of refreshing my cart periodically, sometimes constantly, in order to secure a delivery window. A new web-based tool could make the process a lot less painful for you, provided you live in an area where curbside pickup is an option. I have bad asthma that makes it difficult for me to wear thick masks for a prolonged period of time, transforming every grocery aisle into a potential war zone. Food shopping still has to happen though, a fact that has resulted in some creative dining at my house, courtesy of the local bodega that stocks a limited selection of grocery items. Getting a delivery or pickup window on grocery store sites is increasingly difficult, so much so that Amazon has started a waitlist for new customers to sign up to use its service in order to control the demand. If you’re like me and need to get groceries from a larger store without going inside, the new service Curb Run might be able to help. After you sign up and agree to receive texts, the site will let you know when a curbside pickup option is available at a grocery store near you. The idea here is that you’ll already have filled your cart on the grocery store website of choice, including your payment info. You can then set up an alert on Curb Run indicating how far you’re willing to travel for groceries, what store you want to get them from and what day you’d ideally want to pick them up. Enter your phone number you’ll receive an automated text when the site locates a curbside pickup option available. Unfortunately, the site only works with large chains—and not all of them—but it supports a pretty healthy list of familiar brands, including Wegmans, Safeway, Albertsons, Food Lion, Vons, Smith’s Fry’s, Ralphs and Fred Meyer. I gave it a test drive this morning and received a text about available curbside pickup options 20 miles from my house roughly 15 minutes later. That text doesn’t save you a spot, it’s merely lets you know one exists. Once you get that notification, it’s up to you to quickly load up that grocery store’s site and complete your transaction—hopefully before someone else snags the available pickup time. That means the best way to pull this off is to have the page open and ready to go and keep your eye on your phone so you can pounce quickly as soon as the text alert chimes. It’s not a foolproof system, but if you’ve been trying for a while, it might be just what you need to finally make eggs and milk happen.
