Find out more information
about www.homegrocer.com.
I love to buy food. I heft every orange for the heavy feeling
of juice, press cantaloupes close to my face to catch that
unmistakable scent of ripening fruit, close my eyes to envision
the yellow bell peppers roasted and slightly charred, served
alongside deep green arugula and a white dab of goat cheese.
I read the labels, squeeze the bread, point to the particular
piece of fish I want in a case full of seemingly identical
filets.
The intensely sensory experience of food shopping
made me think that buying groceries on the Internet was
just another bad idea, a product of the irrational demand
for www-dot-anything.
Not that I'm a Luddite. I love e-mail, participate
in online discussions and even have my own domain. But I've
never bought a book from Amazon.com, ordered cheap airplane
tickets from priceline.com or bid on a Simpsons comic at
eBay. It's not that I'm worried about credit-card fraud;
encryption makes online buying more secure than paying for
dinner at a local restaurant. I just didn't see any advantage
to e-commerce.
But the news about HomeGrocer.com intrigued me. The
Internet supermarket's services recently became available
to net-savvy Portlanders; the company has been selling groceries
online in Seattle for about a year. Amazon.com, the Internet
bookseller that made the business community sit up and take
a hard look at the potential of e-commerce, recently bought
35 percent of HomeGrocer.com. But it wasn't until my editor
suggested that the company might be an interesting story--and
he would pay for the groceries--that I typed in its URL.
Shopping on this Web site is straightforward. Find
the asparagus or frozen waffles you want, click on the green
"Buy" button, and the item is added to your virtual shopping
cart. (As in a real store, sometimes the wheels on the cart
are a little wobbly. The site is Java-heavy, so your browser
must be able to handle the popular programming language.)
There's not a lot of product information aside from the
occasional photo. It would be nice to be able to read at
least the federally required nutritional labels. A major
site upgrade is in the works, so more information should
be available soon.
I ordered a selection of perishable items, including
tomatoes, milk, seafood, chicken and ice cream, to see how
it would arrive. I found a few items that you might not
see at your local store, such as organic salsa from Seeds
of Change and kosher tahini. Things I hadn't seen outside
of Seattle were also available, including the fruit-and-wine
Seattle Sorbets (with flavors like blackberry-cabernet and
blueberry-zinfandel) and oatmeal from Snoqualmie Falls Lodge.
The seafood offerings were impressive. I jumped on
the halibut cheeks, tender morsels found just in front of
the gills, and Copper River sockeye salmon. Along with the
usual carrots and peas, the vegetable selection included
two different kinds of arugula, the misshapen but delicious
celery root, and lots of organically grown produce.
A few days later a shiny new truck emblazoned with
HomeGrocer.com's peach logo pulled up right at the scheduled
time. The ebullient driver brought a stack of plastic totes
to the front door on a hand truck, then carried the groceries
into my kitchen. The produce was beautiful, as nice as I
could have picked out myself. Meat and seafood were wrapped
in insulating plastic, a bunch of tulips arrived in a separate
tote to avoid crushing, and a book of postage stamps came
packed in a plastic to-go box (the amount of packaging,
not all of which is reusable or recyclable, is a downside).
A couple of items didn't arrive, and a head of organic
garlic that did was desiccated. I called the 800 number,
and a make-up delivery arrived the next day. The real test
came as we ate the food we'd 'netted. The apples were crisp
and sweet, the oranges fat and juicy, the fish impeccably
fresh. A loaf of Grand Central bread tasted just like the
ones I buy at the bakery a few blocks away. Out of more
than 60 different items, only the garlic was a disappointment.
The replacement head was dried out, just like the first
one.
Will I shop for groceries online again? It beats
fighting the crowds at Fred Meyer, and you don't have put
on your shoes, much less drive anywhere. Like most Internet
firms, HomeGrocer.com has yet to make a profit, and it's
tempting to take advantage of its lose-money, build-market-share
strategy.
I won't give up visits to the local farmer's markets,
though, where I can breathe in the scent of just-picked
strawberries, soak up the deep colors of vine-ripened vegetables
tinged with honest-to-God dirt and support growers and producers
who are holding the sanitized, homogeneous, corporate version
of American food at bay. But late at night, when I'm alone
with the blue glow of my monitor and feel the need to stock
up on ice cream, Italian mineral water or Reese's Peanut
Butter Crunch Corn Puff cereal, I'll surf over to HomeGrocer.com.
URL:
www.homegrocer.com
The first year's membership is free. The site lists a fee
of $35/yr thereafter, but after a year of operation in Seattle
there's still no charge for members. Delivery is free for
orders over $75, $9.95 for less costly orders. If you're
not home to accept a scheduled delivery, it'll cost you
$19.95. You can schedule deliveries 2-9:30 pm Monday through
Friday, 9:30 am-5 pm Sunday.
Deliveries come from a warehouse in Tualatin. HomeGrocer.com
buys from local and national suppliers, just as any other
grocery store does.
For information call (800) 688-0201 or send your questions
to service@homegrocer.com
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Willamette Week | originally
published July 7, 1999
|
