Our first order!

Yesterday we had our first order at the Grocery Station. A real, live person we'd never ever met before signed up for an account and placed an order of groceries of around $190 online. Plus an $11.50 tip and the shopping fee of around $35. Wow! I took off lunch hour at work to help Pam shop since it was our first one and I needed to be sure the wacky operations concept I came up with actually would work from beginning to end.

It was a bigger order than we had allotted time for, so it's a good thing I was there so we could tag team it! We were dashing through the store like it was one of those Grocery Game TV shows! The folks at Kroger were saying something to us about how exciting, our first order, but we were dashing too fast to take that in :) We made it within the designated timeslot, though, with really no hiccups.

How about that?

If the biggest flaw is that we need to allot ourselves more time for larger orders, that's not bad at all.

It was cool to meet the customer, too. Her reason for using this service? She hates to grocery shop, period. Just two nights before, she was telling her husband she'd PAY SOMEONE to just GROCERY SHOP for her! this woman has two kids, both in school, she stayed home all day, but she still hadn't shopped in 4 weeks because she dreaded it.

Interesting to see what the stories will be. We have so far about 5 customers who have created an account but not yet placed an order. I think this might be because all of the fabulous shoppers (but a few) that I hired the first go round have since bailed and moved on to real paying jobs, so now there aren't many openings for customers to place an order. So I've done another round of hiring, and will be doing group interviews weekly. I can't keep up with the individual interviews anymore! I want my nights back at home!

I actually know that when more shoppers sign up, thus opening more customer timeslots available, then more customers will order. And so that's how it goes...our web site gets anywhere from 5-20 hits per day (around 5-10 being "new" visitors).

And Customer #1 says already she'll be a repeat. And her grocery cost, fee, and tip are the EXACT target market we're looking for. Here's to more like her!

After I got back from that crazy shopping trip, I took a minute to reflect on what the heck just happened as I sat in the parking lot at NASA. I said thank you out loud, acknowledged how crazy, insane it was that we just pulled off for REAL, with someone's trust, a concept that started in my back yard a few months ago, and if for nothing else, that later I can say "I totally did that."

That's completely nuts.
Wooooo-hoooo!

I am $30 closer to paying off my student loans ;)