Expat grocery shopping - leave home with it!
Get your favourite groceries delivered to your door wherever that might be
Expat Grocery Shopping is a job I tend to do twice a year - once in Summer and once at Christmas. Living abroad as I do, many British products are either unobtainable or else prohibitively expensive - even for a small quantity.
So, I sit down at my computer, log on to the internet and go to one of several expat grocery companies that I use. My order tends to be made up of three components - one which I shall call 'staple', one 'seasonal' and one 'occasional'. The staple shopping tends to consist of breakfast cereals (unheard of where I now live), packet soups and noodles, tinned meat, gravy granules, baked beans and curry sauces (all unobtainable locally). The seasonal shopping is made up of either squashes and cordials (the local equivalent tends to be highly-sugared and unpalatable to our tastes) or (if it is Christmas time) Christmas cake, pudding mince pies and other typical produce for that time of year.
The method of ordering is much the same as for the major British supermarkets - anyone who has used the Tesco or Sainsbury's sites will not have trouble sorting out what is wanted and keeping an eye on the cost of the shopping basket as they go. Most sites will ask you to sign in first - this is not such a bad thing as it is important that you choose a company which knows the country of delivery before the actual checkout. This matters as otherwise you will not see the full delivery charge (likely to be a major element of the cost if your order includes tinned goods) until it is time to pay. Since most couriers charge by weight band (eg for every increase of 20kg the price increases by a certain amount), it is commonsense to make sure that if you are paying for 60kg of carriage, you order as near to 60kg of groceries as you can.
It usually takes 2 to 3 weeks for our expat grocery order to arrive. Most major couriers now offer online tracking and we have seen how very important it is to keep tabs on where your consignment is at all times. On more than one occasion our local courier has given up or just not bothered to deliver to our home because of a high workload. The shopping is then consigned to a warehouse somewhere and we are left to track it down and collect it.
When you finally get it all home, it is vitally important to check the contents against your order. Don't cut corners here - inspect every item for damage and sell-by dates. The better companies take great pains to pack their groceries carefully but we have still had problems with presentation tins of biscuits and sweets (intended as presents) arriving so badly bent and damaged that to give them to our friends abroad would be a serious slight.
It takes me a couple of hours twice a year to place the order, another hour or so following it across Europe and another hour checking and grumbling about any damage (make sure you get a full refund or replacement) but it satisfies our British tastebuds and provides many a quick meal.
I don't see me giving up my expat grocery shopping.
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