Curbside Pickup Continues

Co-op Curbside

by Susan Andrews

I pride myself on being a very selfsufficient person. I do my own home improvements, shovel my own snow (and sometimes others’), and mend and alter my own clothes. So when the coronavirus descended, I was faced with the uncomfortable realization that grocery shopping was not in my future. You see, I am immunocompromised. Not getting sick, or getting someone I love sick, has become my top priority.

Within days of the announcements surrounding the pandemic, I relinquished my weekly Member-Owner cashier position at HWFC and stopped grocery shopping at the Co-op. It was an unsettling time. And because Honest Weight had not yet started curbside pickup, I was forced to do what I hadn’t done in years: shop at one of the local grocery chains in the Albany area, using Instacart. This became a real adventure, as well as a practice in patience and creativity.

Years ago, I watched a Food Network television show that provided competing professional chefs with a mystery basket filled with random foods. The chefs, once given the basket, were then required to assemble a creative dish made from the food items. This accurately characterizes my four-week experience with the Instacart process.

Because the shopper (me) is able to select an “allow substitutions” feature when ordering, it became a bit of a crapshoot as to what might land in my grocery bag. For instance, a request for a pound of blackeyed peas could, and did, turn into a jumbo, 55-ounce can of baked beans. Or my request for a 5-pound turkey breast could, and did, turn into a 28-pound turkey. With no freezer on hand (at that time), or large family gatherings on the horizon, some creative thinking became necessary.

Just as I was beginning to get accustomed to mystery shopping, I received notice that the Co-op would be offering curbside service.

Pickup Steps Up to the Plate

“This became a real adventure.”

I was all in. else instead, because it was on sale. I was Curbside delivery involves notifying the Coavocados in varying stages of ripeness so op by phone that you would like to be put they would last longer.” It was just too wonon the list to receive next-day curbside serderful. Such care and attentiveness went vice and providing your contact informainto ensuring that I got what I wanted, and tion (an email address or phone number). needed. You are then instructed to compile your grocery list and are told that you would be When I went to the store for pickup, I contacted shortly. would open my trunk and text my shopper Within hours, you are contacted by your ies came. It was nice to have a few friendly personal shopper (in my case, either Deanwords with Deanna or Amy, and off I went, na or Amy) requesting your grocery list, with everything I ordered, plus a deep apinforming you about the process, and inpreciation in my heart for my shoppers and quiring as to when you want to pick up. for the Co-op. You need to provide credit card information, which is promptly destroyed after the Susan Andrews became an active Memtransaction occurs. ber-Owner in 2016, cashiering weekly in Can you believe such service? But that’s She used curbside service from late April not it! I would often get follow-up emails through mid-June. or phone calls from my shopper notifying me that Honest Weight didn’t have an We now use Instacart (see below) but conitem, or asking if I would like something tinue to provide curbside service.

A Message from Marketing

We are excited to announce that HWFC is now shoppable online for delivery via Instacart. It’s taken over a year of ongoing work to bring this full-scale grocery delivery service to life. For more information or to get started placing an order check out www.honestweight.coop/instacart

All Staff who have so seamlessly organized and operated our grassroots curbside pickup program throughout COVID have other essential roles to fulfill here at the Co-op. Amy is our Outreach Coordinator, Deanna is our Education Coordinator, Yevette is our Member-Owner Coordinator, and Liza is our Designer & Marketing Coordinator.

COVID significantly impacted their ability to do normal day-to-day work, most notably in Outreach and Education, which are both traditionally very hands-on and in-person programs. This opened up time

also asked things like “would you like your (or call the front desk) and out my grocerthe express line on Tuesday afternoons. for these Staff to focus their efforts on the curbside program.

As the capacity for everyone to get back to their work routines increases, the need for curbside shopping will naturally decrease. We’ve seen this happen in a big way already as we progress through the phases of NYS reopening. We have no hard stop date for curbside in mind but are actively encouraging curbside customers to transition over to Instacart as we slowly begin (fingers crossed) to get back to normal, which will entail less time for fulfilling curbside orders.

We are open to keeping curbside alive in some fashion in the long term but it would have to look quite a bit different. (Instacart offers a curbside pickup option but would require a significant investment in refrigerated and frozen storage space plus physical staging space for orders to be picked up.) —Alex Mytelka