From the Gluten-Free Balcony.: Ocado Grocery Shopping Haul!

Today, I had the most amazing online grocery shopping experience in my life ever with Ocado*!

* Ocado is an online shopping site, chosen as the best online supermarket in the UK some years ago :)

Fabulous gluten-free range in stock

Most of all, their gluten-free + organic + Asian food range is just splendid.
They store so many different kinds of gluten-free pasta, grains, and vegetables from all around the world! They also sell products from Waitrose, one of the rather posh supermarkets here with amazing stocks of high quality and organic food :) And there was just one item out of stock (risotto rice),and they replaced it with a much better product without any additional charge :)

Cost

Generally, it was surprisingly cheap, especially those items on offers :) Moreover, as for a first-time-user, I got £20 off voucher (the minimum order: £80) which made my trolley costs £61.96 ($97.18)! :D Hurraah!

Flexible website layout

This is another important factor for me to like certain online shopping website or not.

Before, I believed that no other companies can compete the simplicity of ASDA grocery website. But I found that the ocado website exceeded my expectations.

Though, to be honest at the beginning, I didn't fancy their website layout as much for these 3 'initial' impressions:

1. all the information and of the items in the trolley were quite small - says the person whose blog text is tiny :D,
2. you have to scroll down to see more items which gave me this feeling of falling into the cave that never ends - for this feeling, I personally prefer page numbers to know how much more to come, and
3. they don't have this feature that undos deleted items - as I sometimes mistakenly pressed 'x' button and deleted few products and forgot what they were until I got to the check-out.

I reckon these issues are totally fine as they can easily be solved if I specifically search by words and narrow it down or I can just be more careful. Nonetheless, their website layout makes it easier to compare products. And the feature that allows us to change the layout of products into list view or text listing rather than the default shelf listing is great too :)

Lovely hospitality

Here comes the most decisive point of online shopping. As we don't physically go to their shops and interact with shopkeepers when using online shopping, it's hard to tell their hospitality and I think the experience can be blunt.
But with ocado, it was such a heart warming experience :)

First of all, the personality of the driver (I wish I knew his name!) was absolutely amazing.

He called me 30 minutes before the delivery estimate, and asked me whether it's ok for him to come in the next 10 minutes as he's around my neighborhood. It was perfect as I wanted to leave the house as soon as the delivery arrived :)

Then upon his arrival, he helped me put all the heavy bags right next to my door, and told me that they had separated the items into freezer, cupboard, fridge, in different reusable bags with different colours, which we will give back on the next delivery. I really enjoyed his witty little jokes as well :)

Also, they included this cute welcome ocado tea towel for surprise :) How come they knew I wanted a nice tea towel!:D

Lastly, their order receipt was so helpful & informative as well, as all the items were categorised into again freezer, cupboard, fridge, and also into 'use-by-date'!

Anyhow, here it is my little Ocado haul! :)

Cupboard Food & Cooking Ingredients

Clearspring Gluten Free Organic Sweet Miso Paste White 250g - £4.00 (Price per 100g: £1.60)

Tiptree Marmalade Orange Crystal 454g - £2.09 (Price per 100g: 46p)

Ocado Italian Chopped Tomatoes in Rich Natural Juice 4 x 400g - £1.49 (Price per 100g: 9.3p
Sundried Tomatoes Waitrose 530g - £3.89 (Price per 100g: 73.4p)
Nestle Gluten Free Honey Corn Flakes 500g - £2.20 (Price per 100g: 44p)

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Ocado Ground Turmeric 45g - 85p (Price per 10g: 18.9p)

East End Cumin Powder 100g - 99p (Price per 100g: 99p)

Jif Squeezy Lemon Juice 55ml - 50p (Price per 100ml: 90.9p)

Just Add Garlic Puree 75g - £1 ~~£1.69~~ (Price per 100g: £2.25)

Just Add Ginger Puree 75g - £1 ~~£1.69~~ (Price per 100g: £2.25)

Flora Sunflower Oil 1L - £2.25 (Price per 100ml: 22.5p)

Vegetables

G's Cooked Beetroot 250g - £0.47 95p (Price per kg: £3.80)

Ocado Carrots 1kg - 59p (Price per kg: 59p)

Ocado Closed Cup Mushrooms 380g - £1.27 (Price per kg: £3.34)

Ocado Mixed Peppers 4 per pack - £1.32 (Price each: 33p)

Onions essential Waitrose 1kg - 80p (Price per kg: 80p)

Bunch of Salad Onions essential Waitrose - 60p

Courgettes essential Waitrose 600g - £1.80 (Price per kg: £3.00)

Red Cabbage Waitrose Typically: 1kg - 80p (Price per kg: 80p)

Spinach essential Waitrose 450g - £2.00 (Price per kg: £4.44)

I chopped up all the vegetables into many shapes to freeze as our fridge is very small, but our freezer is massive + it's very convenient when cooking :)