This is something I have googled and researched to find alternatives or ideas of what other people do when they ghave to go grocery shopping, but don't have a car. Most sites, said hitch a ride or call a cab, or have your groceries delivered. That wouldn't work out for me for a number of reasons. For one, there is no one that I can hitch a ride with. I refuse to call a cab, because I feel like that's a big waste of money. I mean, there has to be better alternatives. And I would much rather be in store to pick out my own grocery items because I like to see what I'm actually buying. So, let's hear it. For the few of us, who don't have cars, how do you get your grocery shopping done? Do you take the bus, or the train? Do you call a cab?
I have a grocery bag/cart on wheels that will fit most of my weekly groceries... especially the heavy stuff. Then I have a few canvas bags if I have extra things. The handles are long enough to throw over my shoulder, so they are not too bad to carry. In the winter, I will walk to the store, and take a bus back. The bus stops not too far from my house, so it's not bad carrying a ton of bags from there. Usually I can get away with one grocery trip per week, but I'm only shopping for two.
With the exception of perishables, you can have many groceries delivered from Amazon, many of them with free shipping and a lot of them cheaper than the grocery store. For the rest, there might be some type of transportation you have yet to discover in your town. Maybe there is a private transportation service or delivery service you could ask friends, family and neighbors about. If you know someone with a car that you trust, maybe you could offer a service they need in exchange for transportation. Just a few ideas here. I hope you find a solution that works for you!
Before i got a car i use to use the carts at the store i would walk home using the cart for all my groceries than i would call the store to come pick up their cart or just keep for my next shopping trip i actually enjoyed it my legs got a lot stronger from the walk and it was really healthy.
My car is out of commission. Fortunately, I live close to my favorite grocery store. I just walk. Most people would consider it quite a distance, but it's no big deal for me. My other grocery store is not within walking distance. I just catch the bus. It can be pain. I'm single. I only shop for myself. I have also drastically changed my diet in recent months. So, my items are not really heavy.
There is a farmer's market on Tuesdays that I can walk to if I were ever in that situation. There are some drug stores in walking distance as well as some places where I could get already prepared food. Even the Walgreens has some refrigerated items including dairy stuff, but I can also walk to a Whole Foods if I absolutely had to. I used to have the use of a little scooter, and I also have a bicycle. When I was younger I would catch the bus to the grocery store and take a taxi back. It wasn't expensive and it was very convenient.
I have spent years buying groceries without a car. In one location, I was able to walk the distance to a grocery store and just made a trip weekly or a couple times a week to get groceries. I couldn't carry that much, so sometimes it was more frequent than others. Or I would have a cart and backpack with me to lug along the goods. At the other place, I had to take a bus and then walk, but the idea is the same.
When I didn't have a car I would either walk or catch the bus back after I got the groceries that I could carry on the bus. It was kind of hard especially if you gotten more than you could handle. So I would maybe make 2-3 trips to the market a week all depends on what I needed. But I would walk there and never knew until I had everything checked out in line as to what I was going to do to get it back home.
When I didn't have a car, I would walk. Having a grocery bag/cart makes shopping this way much easier. Also, you should carry a durable grocery tote or backpack for the just-in-case's. The important thing is to remember to shop light. The more stuff you have, the harder it will be to bring it home, whether you are walking, pulling it on/off a bus, or up/down stairs. I'd also be careful with how your food is packed. Cold foods should be packed together to keep the coldness longer. And you want to be extra careful with fruits, eggs, and breads. This is a technique I used. Maybe there are some better ones out there. I've also heard of people bringing small coolers with them for their milk products. Amazon is no longer the best place to shop for foods in my opinion, unless you live in Seattle. Amazon has a special grocery store that delivers to the Seattle area. I've shopped Amazon several times this past year thinking I could save money and I didn't. There are a few items that are great because they sell it in bulk, like couscous. But the rest are more than double the price you'd find at the supermarket. So, i'd be careful going this route. Another huge problem you have to watch out for is items coming from non-Amazon stores. A lot of what Amazon is selling now is not located in the Amazon warehouse. That means you will be charged a shipping fee from the seller. Each item from an outside seller will have a shipping fee and sometimes the fee is more than the item itself. I recommend you know first what your local grocery store or Super Walmart is charging for each product and compare. Again, just my opinion.
I think you probably covered all of the possible options. There isn't really much more you can do besides cabs or deliveries, at least nothing less of growing stuff on your own. I personally just take a cab because I don't really see it as much of an expense. It's comfortable and convenient and it takes you from door to door, totally worth the extra expense on top of gas (a.k.a. Their profit). It's also much cheaper than having to buy your own car and worrying about its maintenance, unless you go to the grocery more than once a week. Alternatively, you can maybe get a bike if it's not too far, this way you can also get some exercise in and if not, then maybe a scooter.
If it would be for a monthly grocery then I would really call a cab because it is very difficult to find one whenever you already have your grocery items with you. Obviously you cannot just leave it on the street and try to look for a cab because someone might just take it. My mother had experience that.
I would have to call a cab or get them delivered. It is just simply too far away to walk to anywhere from where I live. Even riding a bike would be too far! I know that some of the local seniors get together and do their grocery shopping on one particular day a week. You could maybe try to hook up with some in your area that may be doing the exact same thing. They trade either baked goods or services with the person that drives them to the store.
I don't have a car and it's actually a good thing to walk to the grocery store. It's not a very long distance but it's still some exercise. Also, I can't buy anything useless because I have to carry the bags myself, so they cannot be too heavy. I think it's a good thing lol
I used to live above a supermarket and would just walk to do my grocery shopping. However, the only other alternative to not taking a cab I would say is either rent a zip car or order from Fresh Direct. They are a food delivery service in the NY area. I'm not sure what area you live in and if that's an option.
I was living in Oxford for the past year and walked to get groceries the entire time. It was a half hour walk (about a mile) one way. You just have to get into the habit of picking up a little bit at a time rather than buying everything all at once, otherwise your back will hate you. I just incorporated a scenic route into my walk and made it part of my weekly exercise plan. To be fair, Oxford is a gorgeous city so perhaps that may not be possible in other cities. In my current city, Indianapolis, I still walk to get groceries about half the time. It is a longer walk, closer to 2 miles, but I have found a nice route through some neighborhoods that I can jog through on my way there. As others have suggested, you have to have good bags to do this. When I don't want to walk, I bike or take the bus. I have a little children's buggy I picked up second hand that I trail behind me and put my groceries in. It takes less time to get there but I feel a bit more exposed to traffic on my bike than when I walk.
I'm lucky because I work part time at a grocery store and I live within walking distance of it. I'm not suggesting that you do the same thing, but MEMck has the right idea. It's a good way to get exercise while you get your chore done.
I take public transit pretty much everywhere I have to go, including grocery shopping. We go on Friday evenings to No Frills and we get our entire week's groceries. We put it into those reusable bags (two or three) and we take the bus. It's one bus to and from so it isn't bad. If it's a packed bus, which it usually is, we'll wait. I would not waste money on a cab, especially considering how it's the same cost as one fare per minute!
Before I got a car I used to always walk to the store and bring back my groceries in a shopping cart. Sometimes if I were to go to a place that was further away I would take a bus there and sometimes,take a cab when buying a lot of groceries otherwise I would come back on a bus as well. I done this for years til I got a car. Now I am back to where I was with no car and I do the same thing I walk,sometimes use the bus and rarely use a cab. The good thing about walking is the more you do it the more you get used to it and it is very healthy.
I did not have a car for the entire month of October due to a fender bender. While I was shopping for a new vehicle, I just got a huge backpack and one of those carts with four wheels that you can pull around in order to lug all my groceries home. Well, I was able to do a lot of shopping this way, but it was truly a hassle because I live in a very hilly area and lugging things up the hill was more of a challenge than one thinks. Even so, it was not too bad and I would end up shopping 3 times a week as opposed to one but it is nice to go to the market and pick out exactly what I like. I would advise using the big backpack/cart combo and you should be fine.
I was in this situation for a few years actually, wasn't able to drive due to health issues (seizures). I guess it depends on how long you will be unable to drive. Is this short term, a few years, or permanent? If this is something long term, I would really consider relocating to a different area where there is more within walking distance. This is what I ultimately did, and it made life so much easier. Prior to that, I didn't have anyone nearby to hitch rides off of easily - everybody I knew lived at least an hour away. So I would make arrangements with them to pick me up once every other week and stock up on groceries and supplies. The other way to look at it, is yeah taxies are expensive, but if you're not making a car payment or car insurance payments currently, not to mention gas, then budgeting in at least a couple taxi rides per month isn't so bad really. Where I used to live, a round trip to the grocery store plus tip would run me about $50-$60. If I only went grocery shopping every two weeks, that's only $120 per month. You just have to really plan your shopping list and forego fresh stuff towards the end until you can get back out to the store. Plan on more meals you can make out of pantry items or from the freezer. The other thing is, it can be kind of tough getting a taxi in the suburbs. They're are mostly independent contractors, and prefer to hang around airports and downtown areas to take back to back orders. They don't like driving all the way out to a suburb, wasting all of that time not making any money in the process, just to do a short run. So, give yourself some leeway if you do decide to use one. There have been times where I had to wait 2-3 hours to get someone to pick me up. A lot of them would take the order, then when they found out where it was, would skip it. In some areas, there are food trucks that will go door to door selling stuff too, such as Schwans. You might want to see if there are any of those in your neighborhood. Where I was living we even had a food delivery service that would fetch food from many local restaurants and deliver it to you in less than an hour. I used this quite a bit as well. They only charged an extra $5-7 on top of what you would normally pay at those restaurants for the check plus gratuity. Basically, the gratuity is automatically included on the check and goes to the driver. I would usually treat myself on the weekends to this if I didn't have guests coming over. Another thing I would do, is order a bunch of stuff from restaurants that deliver, then freeze/refrigerate most of it for later use. I did this a lot with pizza joints, order a large pizza, some salads, and a few sandwiches from them - you're only paying once to tip the driver and you're stocked up with food for a few days. It's not the healthiest thing to do, I know. But when I ran out of produce, the salads filled in for that. When I ran out of pop, I would include a few two liters from them on my order.
