Anybody here ever signed up for one of those meal ingredient delivery services like Hello Fresh? My wife is off to VA for a four-month Army school and I'm going to be doing the Mr. Mom thing for a while and I'm hoping to optimize cooking a bit.
We've done Blue Apron a couple times and I give it mixed reviews - here's why. You still cook it, and it's essentially a grocery delivery service with a recipe attached. For 5 minutes of deciding what you want to cook, you can do the same, but pick all the ingredients yourself. It's easy, don't get me wrong, but I found it overpriced for what it is.
As Jimmy said, here in RVA we have Relay Foods, which will deliver or you can pick up at their preplanned locations. It can be as high end as you want, or relatively conventional, but you're still paying for convenience.
What we've done lately, and I've been a fan of (especially when I was Mr. Mom'ing for a week while the wife was out of town) is grocery pick up at the store. Locally we have a bunch of places that do it now. Kroger (Click List), Wegman's, Walmart, etc. We have a little grocery war in RVA and it's nice. All of them offer a discount for your first purchase, and we took advantage of all of them for that.
Now, I work in the food industry and have competed at the state level in different food judging (Yeah, FFA! I can tell you what a steak will look like on the hoof and after processing) and cooking competitions, and I'm food snobby, but not in the way you probably think - I'm not a hipster/granola/organic/vegan/whatever guy - I appreciate good food, as in, quality, no matter what the package says. I am the guy that takes 5 minutes to buy 12 eggs. I make my own cartons half the time. I care what the brand is because I know the production techniques of the different companies. I buy what I trust because I actually know what happens in a plant and in the field.
I say all that to say this: I find no difference in the quality of non-perishables, especially brand names, from any of the stores we've done online order pick up from. I would recommend it for ground meat of a brand you know, or processed stuff like bacon, sausages, etc. I would not order a steak, chicken breasts, or fish filet online. I like to see it before I buy it. YMMV and you may not be as particular as I am. My best experience was from WalMart, believe it or not. I know. I WAS SHOCKED. I didn't want to like it. I wanted it to be totally crappy like I imagined it would be. It wasn't. It was like they were begging me to like the process. They insisted they load everything into my car and really wanted me to stay in it (I didn't) when they brought the groceries out. They were the only ones striving to make it as easy and streamlined as possible. They even gave me a welcome bag with a bunch of samples, coupons, and a reusable grocery bag. All of the services saved me a solid hour in the store, I could build the purchase over a few days and add to it when we ran out of something (like trash bags or paper towels) and then you give them a 1-hour window when you'll pick up. It typically takes 10 minutes at Kroger, but Walmart was less than 3 minutes from pull up to bags loaded to back on the road. The best part, I didn't have to get my kids out of their carseats and then back in them after we got out of the store. I highly recommend this over a delivery. You just get a lot more for your money this way.
If you want home delivery, I'd look at Amazon Pantry, but you won't get perishables this way.
If you want to try WalMart, this link will get you $10 off (anyone on here feel free to use it, it's not a one and done):
http://r.wmt.co/eI3bc
Hope this helps, and good luck! If for any reason your wife needs something while she's in VA, feel free to reach out, depending on where she is I'm probably pretty close.
