I find online grocery shopping shines for heavy and bulky things that are a huge pain to schlep home otherwise, especially stuff that lasts a while.
All juices/waters/beers/wines, paper towels, lots of oranges/grapefruits, cleaning products like bleach/detergent, etc. When they carry them up to your fourth-floor door it's just so much easier.
The smallish shops are good for stuff you can then easily carry in a bag by hand -- meat, veg, cheese, fresh bread.
Because otherwise you'd have to do a lot more planning in advance.
For instance, I called in to the patisserie this morning on a whim to treat myself to a pain au chocolat for breakfast. And I think I fancy cheese for dinner, so after work I'll nip out to the deli for some stilton and the greengrocer for walnuts and figs to go with it. I've already got fancy crackers and some good port from my last online delivery so that's everything I need for dinner.
I'm used to being able to pick stuff up according to what I feel like eating on the day. Yeah, it wouldn't be a huge quality of life reduction to have to plan meals in advance but why bother if I don't have to?
Plus, when I'm working from home, it keeps me from being entirely sedentary on a miserable, drizzly winter's day when I might not otherwise have bothered leaving the house, so it has physical & mental health benefits too.
Not a European, but this rings true for me in the US. I'll go out and get something, in part, because it is less lonely and feels more attached to life, to the world. Endless deliveries actually make that worse. I started buying more things locally in part because of that.
It's also one of the reasons I don't really like working from home.
I'll go out and get something, in part, because it is less lonely and feels more attached to life, to the world.
When I was young, I worked in a couple of supermarkets. There were a lot of people who came in each day and bought one thing. Not because that's the one thing they needed that day, but because going to the supermarket was their only interaction with other human beings.
I was young, so I thought they were just poor planners. But there was this one guy who I knew would be in the dairy aisle at 4:35pm every day, and I started having his cup of yogurt ready for him when he walked through. It was he who explained to me why certain people were low-volume regulars.
With the exception of "lots of oranges/grapefruits", you only need to get the things in the first list perhaps every 1-3 months + you generally don't have to worry about them selecting a bad box of paper towels or stale cleaning products vs every time something in that second list is "why did they even bother trying to deliver this to me" quality.
Why bother with which? I don't understand the question.
Delivery is for less frequent things that last much longer.
Local ships are for more frequent things that spoil quickly.
And adding the heavier/bulkier things to my local trips, even in smaller quantities, just makes the bags too heavy and unwieldy in the end. I only have two hands. Plus it's way more expensive to buy paper towels as individual rolls than in packs of six.
All juices/waters/beers/wines, paper towels, lots of oranges/grapefruits, cleaning products like bleach/detergent, etc. When they carry them up to your fourth-floor door it's just so much easier.
The smallish shops are good for stuff you can then easily carry in a bag by hand -- meat, veg, cheese, fresh bread.