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Comment by tfmatt | Hacker News Reader

how do you get groceries? you uber to whole foods and back?

(not op) I live in Boston. I have 3 grocery stores (2 supermarkets, 1 Korean grocer) within half a mile of me. One is directly on my bike route home. I walk or bike roughly once or twice a week and pick up a few days worth of food. Each visit lasts maybe 15 or so minutes. When I lived in the Midwest, I'd drive once a month and make it an all afternoon ordeal. Doing it the "Boston way" is probably a little less time on average, about the same cost (actually cheaper with the car cost), and yields a far fresher+healthier diet. When I lived in the Midwest, most produce would be rotten in a couple of weeks, most meat would end up at some point in my deep freezer, and dry goods (like box/can foods & starches) were the base of most meals. Now I eat fresh greens daily, rarely eat box foods, and shaved 5 points off my BMI.

I had to laugh. This is the most HN comment I have seen in a while.

No. I walk to one of the several supermarkets closeby and carry my groceries back.

If I need large ticket items from Costco, I have them delivered through Instacart or Amazon Fresh and that will last me a month or more because I buy in bulk.

I also split the Instacart delivery cost with my roommates often so it ends up being nothing.

And even if I did Uber to Whole Foods and back - I would split the cost with at least one of my roommates who probably also need groceries. Even if I go by myself, I would much rather do this than own a car and pay for insurance, repairs, maintenance, gas and the general headache of owning a large depreciating object. Seriously, Uber to Whole Foods or Costco is like $5.

Do Americans not have food delivery services?

Most people I know under 40 in the UK use supermarket delivery. Ordering once a week takes about 20 mins, delivered more or less when you want to the nearest hour.

The whole response thread of this question reads as satire.

How so? Is it the delivery aspect? Grocery delivery is huge in other parts of the world already. In fact, some grocers run their own services - like Morrisons in the UK.

The US is the one that's behind and if I were to take a guess, it's the suburban sprawl that makes last-mile delivery prohibitive in many parts of the mid-west, etc.

Op states that it's ridiculously expensive. Others respond that it's not a problem since you can always shack up with friends or strangers and use different food deliveries to save money.

Living in a denser urban environment is just a completely different lifestyle than living somewhere in the midwest - you can't have the same set of expectations when comparing them. Just as living in Japan is completely different from living in Texas. Neither is better, and you don't have to force yourself to like one or the other.

But you wouldn't go to live in Japan and expect a 2 story house with a backyard, and space to keep 3 Ford F-150s in a garage would you? In the same way, the entire lifestyle of living in SF/NYC is completely different than living elsewhere. Why use the same metrics to compare the very different lifestyles without taking into account that they are in fact different and can't so easily be compared?

You must be willing to make adjustments to your lifestyle. If you are not willing to do this and you only compare different places against what's familiar - then just stay where you're comfortable - you'll never be happy anywhere else.

I'm lucky enough to have lived in many many different types of environments throughout my life and I see the value in all of them.

By the way, for what it's worth I love my current roommates - I much prefer living with them to living alone.

I live in SF. Uber pool to Costco is ~$5. I have a Safeway around the corner and instacart isn’t that bad re price.

Usually what I see is people walking groceries back, just a couple bags, but there's always Lyft/Uber or even services like Zipcar or Getaround.

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