• PC World
• » Software
• » Browsers & Add-Ons

You're a busy person, right? If an online grocery store services your neighborhood and you don't relish the idea of trolling supermarket aisles in your copious free time, then do yourself a favor, for crying out loud: Start buying at least some of your groceries online--before it's too late.

With the continuing electronic-commerce shakedown, recent news reports range from gloom to doom about Webvan, Peapod, Streamline.com, and their competitors. "Webvan and other online grocers won't be able to succeed because they can't integrate goods from different suppliers and ship them in a cost-efficient way," declared Ravi Kalakota, an analyst at E-Business Strategies in Atlanta.

As a result, Webvan, the largest online grocer, is under enormous pressure to turn a profit. Competitors Streamline.com and ShopLink recently ceased operations. Consolidations occur on a regular basis; Webvan acquired HomeGrocer.com this past summer, for instance. Peapod pulled out of several markets earlier this year and would have shut down entirely, had it not been for a $73 million cash transfusion from a Dutch grocery chain.

Better Than You'd Think

Meanwhile, as the dot-coms slip (and a few go out of business), shoppers complain about waiting in ever longer grocery store checkout lines--yet are slow to change their "entrenched behavior," Babson College professor Kathleen Seiders noted in USA Today.

It would be a shame if the struggling online grocery industry failed--and an acute shame if it happened because of consumer apathy. I've been buying groceries on the Web for 18 months now, and I can't understand why anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and a local cybersupermarket would stand in line when he or she can shop online.

Need convincing? Read on. What follows are the biggest advantages and the relatively minor drawbacks of online grocery shopping, extrapolated based on my experiences using two Web grocers serving my San Francisco neighborhood, Webvan and Peapod. Since the options offered by online grocery services vary from area to area, your neighborhood Web grocers may or may not have the same pros and cons that I found. See " This Way to the Checkout Line" to see if you, too, can get delivery service.

• See more like this:
• webvan,
• peapod,
• streamline,
• homegrocer,
• popgrocer,
• homeruns,
• latingrocer,
• netgrocer,
• pdquick,
• peachtree network