It's no secret that Concord doesn't have a lot of in-town grocery options. So, I signed up as one of the first of Streamline's Concord customers as soon as they expanded into town in late March. I used the service for 6 weeks to order online groceries, prepared meals, video rental, collection of deposit bottles/cans, and dry cleaning. Here is a rundown of my experience with them.

How it Works
Either via fax, telephone, or online through the Streamline Website, groceries and a small selection of services can be ordered. Services include dry cleaning, photo processing, video rentals, shipping, and re-heatable, prepared meals. Unlike some other services, orders are put together from the Streamline warehouse, not an associated grocery store. Orders are finalized for delivery to Concord on Monday nights and delivered Tuesday afternoon. You pay for the groceries and services, plus a monthly fee ($30) for use of the service.

The delivery person stows your order in your basement or garage. Before your first delivery, Streamline installs a full-sized fridge/freezer and a substantial shelving unit to receive your order. These are yours to use at no extra cost as long as you subscribe to their service. At the time they install the fridge, Streamline also scans barcodes on the contents of your refrigerator and cabinets, preparing a "personal shopping list" for you....a kind of quick-start on your grocery ordering. They also give an in-person tutorial for placing your order.

Is Price Your Main Consideration?
Streamline offers convenience, time saving, and service, not inexpensive shopping. Their prices are not usually lower than our already-available shopping, and often they are just a little higher. While they do offer a few sale items every week, the sales do not generally represent deep discounts. They do not accept coupons. And I found very little seasonal benefit for produce prices as the spring progressed (e.g.: asparagus $3.99/lb in early May when it's $1.99 or less in local stores).

If good deals and cheap groceries are what you most need in your shopping experience (and many people must make this important consideration), I would say move on to read another article: Streamline is not for you.

Service
Streamline's strong point is their service... and what service! The set-up process involves a truly stunning amount of it. They gave a caliber of attentiveness which made me realize how little of it I generally receive most everywhere else I do business. All the folks I had contact with were pleasant, helpful people doing a really thoughtful job which they seem to enjoy. The details of this service are exceptionally well thought out. Their methods for doing things make tremendous sense. I can often see both large and small flaws in the ways most businesses set up their operating systems, and found I could fault Streamline on almost no point in their methodology, try as I might. Somewhere in this company lurks real genius.

On the point of ongoing service, however, communication broke down for a little while. I had to complain loudly and repeatedly about a number of things before I got ANY response whatsoever. Once I got their attention, they followed through on everything and never again failed to quickly respond to me. I don't know if I stumbled into an unlucky run of unduplicatable circumstances, they were having a bad week, they since did some whip cracking, or whatever, but it did not happened again.

Their Website
If you are looking to see what the shopping experience is like from their Website, forget it. It's not available to view unless you are a customer. In fact, I found their site curiously brief with little info for anyone who was just considering their service.

For ordering, I found the site well done and pleasant to shop from. It was a little slower than I would have liked, but since Concord has virtually NO high speed options for home use , it could have been my 28.8 modem at fault. I did have problems, however, when I turned off the Java capabilities on my browser, even though I chose their non-Java version.

There is currently no nutritional information available, nor can you find a list of ingredients in the products they offer. That would have helped me shop, especially when I was substituting an unfamiliar brand where I couldn't find what I was used to buying. They tell me they plan to introduce access nutritional information on products this summer.

The site presents products as all text, giving little motivation to do much impulse buying: no pretty packaging or catchy displays. This format took me about a week to adjust to, and then it proved to make shopping significantly faster and simpler than more conventional means. And no driving through town! I vote for that! I also liked not having to lug heavy things to and from my car in all weather.

Shopping for and Receiving the Goods
I tend to buy a lot of fresh produce and not much meat or pre-packaged food. I am also somewhat picky about what groceries I buy. So, my perceptions about choices available with Streamline may not be the same as yours if your diet or interest level in what you eat is substantially different.

Streamline carries major brands, and a little of the "generic" Sweetlife brand. I don't think they carry the same level of variety and number of products of most grocery stores. I found they often did not carry the specific products I preferred or was used to, but in the majority of cases, I found items to substitute. Their produce was all good (though pricey), but the choices, again, weren't as wide as I would have liked. Their meats are the same as those in the Roche Brothers stores, and they also carry a line of premium cuts. I did not get the chance to try any of their fish or seafood, but I did notice they had only a very small selection. They have just begun to offer Starbuck's coffees, which I also didn't try.

They are only just reintroducing prepared, reheatable foods just as I completed after a short absence due to the loss of their supplier. I tried their fresh lasagna and eggplant, the Lowfat Sundried Tomato & Asiago Tortellini with Lump Crab and Alfredo Sauce and the Oven Roasted Meatloaf and Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Nice as these all sounded, my dining companion quipped that "airline food is certainly not worse." They are still testing their new vendors, and I would say they still have a way to go, though they are anxious to receive feedback and make improvements.

I did miss the types of items in many regular grocery stores which cross over with health food store offerings. This meant I had to visit the health food store every couple of weeks, and at that time I bought additional produce.

It was nice to rent videos and do dry cleaning from home. These are two things I almost never get around to doing, yet I took advantage of them both most weeks.