If you know me, you know my love of Peapod. I’ve been a loyal Peapod customer for over 2 years and, since then, have bragged about it to everyone who will listen on a near-weekly basis. I was compensated to write this article but ask any of my friends and they would probably think I’ve been being paid by Peapod for years now because of the way I have preached about it.
I could write an entire book about all the reasons I love Peapod but I’ve narrowed it down to my 5 main reasons for the purposes of this article.
Ah, Peapod, let me count the ways…..
1. Budget. My husband is terrified any time I physically walk into a grocery store, and for good reason. I have a way of going in for a loaf of bread and emerging with a $300 receipt, bags full of specialty cheeses and every item that was on sample, and no legitimate meals for the week. It’s a completely different experience when I’m ordering groceries on my phone, though. I don’t have to deal with the temptation of things we don’t need, and I can see the tab running up right in the top corner of my screen. If it’s getting out of control, it’s a lot easier to delete an item from my cart than it would be to run it back to the aisle once it’s already on the belt for checkout (or when I’ve already sampled it and NEED it). I pay about $125 a year for the PodPass which gets us unlimited free deliveries for orders over $100 and I save WAY MORE than that by never entering a grocery store. I’m not kidding when I say I can easily spend $125 over my grocery budget in one single last-minute, unplanned trip to the store. Shameful but true.
2. Time. This one speaks for itself. I can spend an hour of my packed day grocery shopping and lugging bags from the car to the kitchen and unloading them, or I can take 5 minutes on the couch at night (or at the playground or in the backyard where my kids are happily playing), to place an order from my phone and have it delivered right to my kitchen. It allows me more time to do the things that are more important to me - spend time with my family, work, keep my house in order, exercise, shower, the possibilities are endless!
3. Meal Planning. Meal planning is super important in my house. I refuse to eat the same thing every day and I also hate wasting food. I’m not a “cook once, eat twice” kind of person because I don’t mind cooking every day if the meals are simple and still delicious. We used to get meal delivery kits pretty regularly, but I have since built up a LARGE arsenal of recipes from those services that I use every week to plan our meals. My pantry is stocked with most essentials by now and I try to pick recipes that have the same ingredients used in different ways. My husband jokes that I could have an entire blog just about how I meal plan because it has been so effective at keeping variety in our meals and keeping food waste down. On the app, it’s so easy to type in the list of ingredients and add them to the cart, as opposed to running around multiple aisles which always results in my forgetting a vital ingredient.
 Last week I got FIVE different dinners for $64.60! Budget, check! Meal planning, check! |
4. Convenience. At the time that I signed up for Peapod, I had a 2-year-old and a newborn. The thought of dragging both of them to the grocery store (working around nap schedules of course), dealing with any blowouts (diaper or temper) while in the store, and then trying to get THEM plus all my groceries back into my house by myself was daunting. And how about the fact that there was actually nowhere to even put my groceries with a toddler in the cart seat and a newborn in his car seat taking up all the space in the cart?! With Peapod, my 2-year-old wheeled his toy cart up to the door as soon as he saw the Peapod truck pull up, the sweet driver filled his cart, and he wheeled the groceries back and forth into the kitchen while I unloaded them. Switching to Peapod turned a huge inconvenience into a fun, educational, engaging task for my toddler and completely eliminated an unnecessary problem from my life. And a super bonus: he’s now 4 years old and can unload an entire week’s worth of groceries by himself.
 Enzo, age 2, getting ready to meet his friend the delivery driver and start unloading groceries for me! |
5. Taking advantage of sales. This kind of fits in with the “budget” category but it deserves a separate mention because it’s something I just never do while shopping at a brick-and-mortar. When I’m shopping for my groceries on the Peapod app, if something I’m ordering is on sale I can take full advantage of it. For instance, last week I noticed that potatoes and onions were on a BOGO sale. Because I was ordering from home ahead of time, I was able to easily adjust my meal plan to accommodate both sales. Had I noticed that sale in-store (unlikely I would’ve even noticed because it doesn’t present itself as a pop-up like it does on a phone screen), I probably would’ve either ignored it completely or picked up an extra bag of onions that I didn’t have a plan to use and ended up throwing them out 2 weeks later. So I was able to cut down on food waste AND get free food! I KNOW there are actual paper coupons and store circulars I could read and keep track of, and I did try my hand at extreme couponing for a hot minute but seriously, now with 2 kids? Ain’t nobody got time for that anymore.
 BOGO win! |
I have to get off my soapbox now because I could really be here all day - I’ve actually been up here for 2 years already with no end in sight. I hope that if you’ve ever been interested in Peapod, you’ll take advantage of the special offer through their partnership with Macaroni Kid, which is $25 off your first 2 deliveries of $100 or more!
