Grocery delivery services can help save time and money. Order groceries online and have them delivered to your door!
As a mom, grocery delivery services will help you save time and money, as well as sanity.
I remember as a first time mom I would search “how to get groceries without leaving the house”, thinking it was a long shot.
Lo and behold, it’s a real thing! Now I utilize grocery delivery services as much as I can.
Check out how to get groceries delivered to your door without sacrificing healthy food.
There are times when I love going to the grocery store, when I leave my kids with my husband and I can just relax while I browse the aisles and don’t have to worry about the 10 minute time limit that my boys have before they start to meltdown.
There are also days when going to the store is the last thing I want to do for multiple reasons: It’s crowded, the lines are long, what you need might be out of stock so you have to make another stop, and you’d probably rather be doing something else.
Grocery stores are also full of temptations like magazines, candy bars (I’m a sucker for Reese’s Cups in the checkout line) and other items not on your shopping list that might make you spend more than you mean to.
Grocery and meal delivery services can help you save time, cut costs and ditch your weekly trip to the store.
Here are the best grocery delivery services to help you save time and save money on grocery shopping!
This post contains affiliate links.
Instacart
For those who need their groceries right away, Instacart is a great option.
Instacart is available throughout most of the United States and can deliver items in as little as one hour.
Unlike lots of other grocery delivery services, Instacart doesn’t ship your food from giant warehouses.
Instead, it connects you with freelance personal shoppers who bring you groceries from your local grocery stores like Costco, Safeway, Whole Foods, etc.
I really love that you can order from Costco because we tend to impulse buy a lot when we go to Costco.
It’s the one store where my husband actually insists on going through every single aisle.
We tend to pop in for just a few things and walk out with $400 worth of stuff (true story).
So the fact that I could have our necessities delivered right to our door without temptation of buying the whole store is pretty awesome.
For one-hour services, the Instacart delivery fee is $5.99 for orders over $35. For non-rush orders above $35, the fee is just $3.99. The minimum order is $10.
There is also the option to sign up for Instacart+, which is their membership program that costs $99 per year, or $9.99 a month.
With this membership delivery is free for one hour, two hour and scheduled deliveries over $35. If you want to try out Instacart, click here!
Amazon Fresh
AmazonFresh is currently only available in select areas but it works just like Instacart.
You can order your groceries through their website and they will have them delivered that same day if you order early enough or you can order in the evening and wake up to fresh food delivered to your door.
The items themselves tend to be priced pretty competitively, with regular sales and coupons and since Amazon has acquired Whole Foods, you can order food from your local Whole Foods as well.
You can check out Amazon Fresh here.
For Amazon Fresh you do need to have a Prime account so take that into consideration.
Doordash
You may have used doordash for restaurants and fast food but did you know they now also deliver groceries?
They have recently expanded their merchants to grocery stores, making it even easier to have your groceries delivered right to your door. The whole process is very similar to Instacart and if you have never used Doordash before, it’s usually pretty fast.
The best part is you can piggyback orders so you can order lunch and have your dasher pick up your groceries at the same time.
Thrive Market
Thrive Market is different from the others because they offer only organic and natural foods, cleaning supplies and other items.
A lot of the items on the Thrive Market website are things that can be difficult to find in regular grocery stores which is one reason why I love it.
It is a membership program similar to Costco because they sell their products at wholesale prices so you tend to make up the $59.95 annual fee pretty quickly if you are ordering regularly.
The best part is they offer a 30 day free trial before you have to commit to anything.
I was definitely skeptical when I signed up for my free trial but now I order all the time because many of their items even cheaper than they are on Amazon!
Plus they email you coupons all the time, there’s really only been a handful of times I haven’t used some type of coupon when ordering.
They offer free shipping on all orders over $49 which is why I generally wait until I’m out of several things before I order again or just order in bulk, like einkorn flour.
I love to make large batches of homemade freezer waffles made with einkorn flour for my kiddos and Thrive Market is the cheapest place I’ve been able to find it, so I generally order several bags at a time and that enables me to get free shipping.
One thing I really love about their site is that you can search through all their items by values and diet.
Meaning you can filter through items that are gluten free, keto friendly, paleo friendly, organic, pasture raised, made in the U.S.A, etc. so if you have any restrictions, it’s incredibly easy to filter out any items you can’t or won’t use.
Another really great feature they just started offering is meat and seafood boxes.
You can buy boxes filled with tons of different types of organic meat like organic antibiotic free chicken breasts, grass fed beef, pasture raised pork, wild caught seafood and combo boxes of everything they offer.
I have yet to try the meat boxes personally but I’ve heard amazing things about the quality.
I also really love the company’s ethics and love being able to support them.
For every paid membership, they match that by providing a membership to a low income family who might not otherwise have access to wholesome and convenient food.
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I didn’t know that DoorDash is doing grocery delivery now, too. We have an account on Walmart+ so use them for grocery delivery a lot. I can do that for personal groceries, but when it’s for a client recipe I can’t rely on the substitutions so have to go in-person for those groceries. I love having them delivered when I can, though, and save myself so much time!
I need to try ThriveMarket because it seems to align with my eating values. I haven’t done a delivery service, but I need to try it sometime!
I’ve tried all of these. My best experience was with Instacart, but they were all closely matched. I can say that these are great services.
It does seem you can make up the fee pretty quickly. I wouldn’t mind trying this
Hhhmm…I haven’t used the Instacart service before. I look forward to trying them out. Hopefully they treat their employees well!
I can totally relate, as I am also a very busy mom. I spend 3 to 4 hours every week doing groceries, and sometimes I’d much rather spend it another way. I haven’t tried ThriveMarket yet. I will give them a try. Thanks for sharing.
Great article! Your recommendations for the best grocery delivery services are helpful for saving both time and money. The detailed comparisons make it easier to choose the most suitable option. Keep up the good work!
Oooh, I just read about an incident with a door dash rider, I hope that has been resolved.
But yeah, I find it really handy to use online services for groceries. We still go to the supermarket, but only for a few ones you won’t find in online apps– but usually, we get even our seafood supplies and the usual pantry stash delivered. We don’t have a car so it makes our bags lighter to carry when we do go to the grocery.
Nowadays, we always love to use deliveries in case we are so busy and can’t go there. This is a good list. Thank you for sharing!