subject: Grocery Shopping For The English Diet [print this page] The "English diet" has just hit the news as being the one that our Scottish, Welsh and Irish cousins should be mimicking. I'm not sure that after many centuries of occupation and repression they'll be that pleased to add patronisation' to the list of gripes they've got with us. The suggestion that they should down pies and pick up a healthy salad instead will probably aid the Scottish campaign for independence more than any low tax promise that Alex Salmond can come up with. Besides do the powers that be realise how hard getting the English diet into English families is? Finding affordable ways to complete the weekly shop, buy fresh fruit and vegetables and then persuade the family to actually eat them is a difficult enough task for English parents.
Extra duties
However, it has got a little easier in the last ten years or so with the introduction and growth of online grocery shopping. Fresh fruit delivery has also become an option with a range of companies offering the service. Online grocery shopping certainly takes the pain out of the weekly or monthly shop, but even so getting fresh fruit into the house has until recently involved extra little shops during lunchtimes. What researchers in their dreaming spires don't seem to understand is that the amount of time and energy this can take is difficult for those of us who not only work but have to fit a myriad of extra-curricular duties in as well. It's fairly likely that Scottish, Welsh and Irish parents face exactly the same dilemmas.
Doorstep deliveries
Thankfully the online grocery shopping world is changing rapidly with more and more competition and providers entering the market. In the early days the online grocery suppliers were the main supermarkets. Smaller outfits including organic farms and fruit delivery companies did operate but their charges were the main problem for many of us and this has become even more the case in recent years. However, new suppliers have examined the market and found that fruit delivery and grocery delivery is, quite literally, right up their street. Remember the Milkman?
Forgotten but not gone
Well they still exist and they're offering a great take on the online grocery shopping model. Delivering anything up to 250 daily essentials they feature the rather attractive idea of no delivery charge. This is nothing new to the dairies as they work to established rounds and don't charge a premium for delivery. Specialists in single item orders since the Victorian era, the country's milkmen and women offer a truly unique grocery delivery service. Fruit delivery has been one area that has been costly but fresh fruit delivery is just one of the areas they now cover and it could be one of the most effective ways to get that daily five delivered straight to your door at about the same time you let the cat in. Offering free delivery, with late ordering times, the milkman may soon be reclaiming his rightful position as one of the great heroes of peacetime. Let's just hope they have them north of the border.
