We just returned to our house from a new experience and are unloading the fruits of our labor. Well, the word “labor” really doesn’t apply because other people did all the work. Today, Sidney and I did grocery store pickup after placing our shopping order online.

Specifically, we did Walmart’s version of grocery store pickup called Walmart Grocery. Sidney and I do the bulk of our grocery shopping at our local Walmart Market and a few weeks back our location started advertising its online pickup service. For those who don’t know, I came up with the concept of grocery store pickup over three years ago so it was mandatory that we give my brainchild a shot (full disclosure, after publishing that blog post I found out that my “great idea” was already an actual thing).

To be honest, it was Sidney who wanted to give it a try. Curious myself, the two of us sat down yesterday at the computer to place our order. You see, at least for Walmart’s grocery store pickup, all orders must be placed at least the day before. The ordering part is a breeze. There is a search bar and you simply type in the item you want (i.e. “bread,” “milk,” “ice cream,” etc.) and the entire inventory of that item pops up. You then click on the specific product you want and it is moved to your “cart.”

After about 30 minutes we had filled our cart with our weekly groceries. It was now time to check out. Again, too simple. We entered our debit card info and the purchase was made. We immediately received confirmation from Walmart with our time of pickup.

Fast forward to today. I received a text message to my phone at around noon telling me that our groceries were ready. We had scheduled a 2 p.m. pickup so it was nice that they had filled our order a little early. Walmart even called me right at 2 p.m. just to make sure we were still on track to get our groceries (our lunch with Sidney’s family ran a little past the hour so we didn’t get to the store until around 2:30 p.m.).

We pulled up to Walmart Market and parked in one of the spots designated for Walmart Grocery. Within seconds we had two Walmart associates approaching our car. One associate was a man pushing out our groceries while the other associate was a woman who was running the operation. The woman warmly greeted me and thanked me for using the service. She then gave me a complimentary gift bag with a few items in it as a token of their appreciation. The man then had me sign off on the groceries and then both employees started to fill up the back of our car. We were then off on our way.

This was the gift bag I was given today for using Walmart Grocery.

Overall it was a good experience. The service is free and our entire order was filled accurately except for one substitution they had to make on our spaghetti sauce. Items were bagged with care and stickers with “fragile” were placed on bags with food such as bread and eggs. The Walmart associates were extremely nice and helpful and we never had to set foot inside the store.

I can see us doing Walmart Grocery again. However, I will make sure to still write an actual grocery list before placing our order online. Because our grocery needs are extensive, it is good to sit down at the computer with everything you need right in front of you. When Sid and I ordered yesterday, we were just inserting items off the top of our heads.

In the future, I see us doing a mix of online shopping and actual in-store shopping. Perhaps we might alternate weeks? Shopping online is great for convenience and for avoiding the circus that Walmart on Sunday can sometimes be. In-store shopping will still be important for those weeks where we don’t have time on Saturday to sit down at the computer and list every item we need or for those days where we just want to browse the actual aisles to see if new products/better deals are available.

Two thumbs up for Walmart’s version of grocery store pickup. They provided us with a good initial experience and we will surely do it again in the future. Don’t Blink.