Tales from a Stop & Shop in Framingham! - Part 1

First, I want to just extend a "thank you" to the people of Peapod and Stop & Shop who invited a bunch of bloggers and whatnot to their Framingham store today! I had a great time learning about the grocery delivery service, Peapod and I also enjoyed being away from my kids for 45 minutes! Many, many thanks to the two young ladies who watched my precious lads this morning! Well anyways....

2 weeks ago, I got an invite from Stop & Shop to come on down to their Framingham store to get a tour and talk about Peapod (their delivery service). I'll be honest. At first I was thinking "What? Oh great, drive 40 miles to see a couple guys walking down the isles of Stop & Shop preparing people's grocery orders." (Let me add - I was also thinking "People who are obviously too lazy to do their own grocery shopping"...). I'll be honest. Grocery shopping doesn't bother me. I enjoy it actually. Why pay a store $10 (plus tip) to do it for me? Will I ever get so busy in life that I can't devote an hour a week to a supermarket? I hope not.

Well anyways, since grocery stores amuse me, I decided to give it a shot. I have to say, sometimes I am not fair to Stop & Shop. I grew up going to Stop & Shop (3 thumbs up for the circle Stop & Shop in Fairfield, CT!). I was there when they ripped down walls and upgraded from "Stop & Shop" to "Super Stop & Shop". As a teenager, we moved to a closer Stop & Shop - but I kept true to that circle Stop & Shop whenever my teenage impulses made me go grocery shopping (which, by the way, was pretty much never). What was my thought of Shaw's back then? It was blah. Well Shaw's was relatively new to the area - I think it came around Southern CT in the early to mid 90s. I was in high school. I really didn't care. All I knew was it was on the other side of town and dealing with traffic on Black Rock Turnpike drove me crazy. It still does.

So I decided to pack the kids up in the car and venture off to watch a couple guys bag some groceries. Plus, there was an offer of some lunch. We don't pass up free lunch in this house. We got there and 2 amazing young ladies watched a gazzillion kids for us crazy bloggers. I think my little red head got anxious because when we got back, one of the ladies was holding him. Oops.

Back to the tour. So I didn't know this, but Stop & Shop has about 21 stores that do Peapod. Peapod is actually it's own little store that is owned in part by Stop & Shop. I always thought it was some fancy name Stop & Shop came up with for this service - I didn't really know it was it's own thing. We walked upstairs of the rear of the store and it was amazing - it was like a mini grocery store up there! There were a bunch of people running around getting orders processed. I thought it was funny because they call the people who pull the groceries for the orders "Shoppers." It really is a whole methodical way of doing stuff. I was also actually surprised at how many orders they had. Honestly - they much do a great business - there were a lot of workers there for Peapod, so it must make some money, right? I'm honestly shocked. In my mind, the only people who get groceries delivered are the elderly and rich people. Apparently Framingham is booming with both - or maybe just "normal" people have jumped on this bandwagon as well.

So besides lunch, the kind people of Stop & Shop and Peapod gave us a $50 gift card - so of course I jumped on the chance to use it. I have my order placed and it will be delivered tomorrow night. I have until 11:59 tonight to change it. I will talk more about costs, quirks, benefits and whether or not it's worth it to use this service on Friday!