Online shopping a welcome relief for parents, busy shoppers

When Jennifer Gard moved to Florence from Raleigh, N.C., she already was accustomed to shopping for her groceries online. She just made her order online at night and picked it up at the grocery store the next morning.
Six months ago, she was happy to find out a local Piggly Wiggly had picked up on the trend and was offering online shopping through its recently acquired Click N’ Shop program.
Gard, a mother of three young children, said the program is a welcome relief.
“I don’t have a lot of time during the week, so I don’t like to spend an entire day at the supermarket,” she said.
Gard said she does her shopping at night after her children have gone to bed and then picks up her groceries the next morning.
The program began last June and started at Piggly Wiggly locations in Columbia and Charleston. The program now is offered in 17 stores across the state. Piggly Wiggly Carolina Company Assistant Marketing Director Christy Boudolf said there has been a steady increase in online grocery orders since the program’s inception in June 2008.
“The popularity seems to stem from customers valuing convenience! It’s a time saver, and you can shop from home and look at what you have in the pantry or refrigerator,” she said in an e-mail to the Morning News. “Many parents appreciate that they can drive up for a quick pick up, rather than unloading the children to shop in the store with them.”
Online grocery shopping has been a trend for years in the online community that, Boudolf said, Piggly Wiggly adapted to better serve their customers’ needs.
“Many folks are time-starved. We can save them time, be their personal shopper, to assist them so they can go on about their business,” she said. “It’s a further extension of our tagline ‘Feed your life.’”
Florence Piggly Wiggly Store Operator Marty Massey said the Florence location currently serves 30 online customers. The process for filing an order, he said, is simple.
“A customer goes to thepig.net and clicks on Click N’ Shop, and they click the items they want,” he said. “They choose a check out time to come and purchase, and once that time comes, they pull up in a special parking spot reserved for online customers, and we bring their groceries to them. They never get out of their car.”
Massey said the store asks customers to order their groceries online at least four hours before they intend to pick them up.
Once we receive the order, he said, it is downloaded to a handheld computer, which an employee uses to shop for the customer. If an item is out of stock, then Piggly Wiggly will notify the customer. Online customers’ groceries are selected two hours before they arrive to ensure freshness. For an extra $5 fee, Piggly Wiggly will bring the groceries to the customer’s car.
“We’ve had great popularity among people with children in car seats,” he said.
Florence Piggly Wiggly’s Click N’ Shop is currently the only online shopping service in Florence County that offers this unique service.
Click N’ Shop “is something new, different and exciting,” he said. Customers that use the program “will never walk in a grocery store again because (Click N’ Shop) is so convenient.”