Day 16 of Lockdown - How to purchase essentials while minimizing risk

A friend of mine reached out earlier this week with a proposition. Since it looked like the Bay Area lockdown would be extended, why don’t we team up to grocery shop for each other to reduce the number of trips we were making and reduce our risk of exposure?

Initially we grouped those that were in similar areas together, so we would only be shopping for 1-2 other families, and created a google sheet to track the items we needed. I also included a separate tab for hard-to-find items like toilet paper, clorox wipes and sanitizer.

DIY - Want to try it? Grab this Google Sheets template and some of your besties! 💡

  • Pro Tip - Once we got started we were down to 3 families so no longer needed to subdivide our efforts. If you have a lot of people in your group, you can create additional tabs for each location.


Don’t want to go out? Here are some online ordering options we’ve broken down for you -

  • Imperfect Foods - Delivers fresh produce, snacks and dairy. Use this link for $10 off your first order and support your farmers!

    • Pro Tip - There’s no cost to sign-up so if you want to try it, doing it early allows you to get into the queue to be assigned a start date due to increase demand.

  • Safeway - Allows you to pickup from your local Safeway without ever setting food in the store.

    • How to order - Safeway.com

    • Gotcha - Items can stock out without warning. You’ll only find out when you try to pickup and find out that items were missing from your order. Substitutes can be pretty extreme as well, and there’s no way of figuring out what was substituted until you pickup your order so it’s a good idea to check your order before you leave.

    • Pro Tip - Unlike Amazon whose’s delivery slots often go missing while you are trying to complete your transaction, Safeway.com allows you reserve a suitable pick-up or delivery slot before you place items in your cart.

  • Amazon - There are so many Amazon services available now to help you get your groceries without setting foot in a store. So which to choose? We break them down for you here -

    • Prime Now - Supports ordering at various stores including Whole Foods (Pickup & Delivery) and Amazon Prime Now (Delivery).

      • How to order - Prime Now App. You can also use go to primenow.amazon.com but it only supports delivery.

      • Pro Tip - Delivery windows open throughout the day with availability being displayed prominently on a banner by selecting a store from here. Amazon Prime Now allows you to order non-food items like art supplies for your kids along with your groceries! If you’re trying to shop from Whole Foods, decide whether you want to try Pickup or Delivery before you put things in your cart as availability varies pretty drastically.

      • Gotcha - Store availability varies on zip code. Prime Now has different inventory than Amazon Fresh or Amazon Whole Foods.

    • Amazon Fresh - Has a far more extensive list of groceries than some of Amazon’s other offers.

      • How to order - Amazon.com or Amazon App -

      • Gotcha - While they must be releasing delivery windows regularly, in practice it’s almost impossible to get a delivery slot.

    • Whole Foods Delivery - While Whole Foods is not a service strictly speaking, it’s too key to avoid talking about.

      • How to order - Amazon.com or Amazon Mobile App.

      • Gotcha - Ordering this way will not allow you to do a curbside pickup. See Prime Now above for this option.

  • Craving specialty foods? Here are some popular grocery stores and who they’ve partnered with to deliver -

    • Instacart

      • H-Mart

    • Shipt

      • 99 Ranch