Amanda Kelly may never walk inside a Kroger grocery store again.
The mother of a 2-year-old boy and a 9-month-old girl, it hasn't been easy for Kelly to manage her children during her weekly two hour shopping trip. But on Thursday, she was able to do her grocery shopping without leaving the car, her children calmly resting in the backseat.
Charleston now has its first Kroger with the online ordering and pickup service called ClickList. The location, at 5717 MacCorkle Ave. Southeast, is the fourth in West Virginia to launch the service, among approximately 400 nationwide.
For customers like Kelly, it has made the grocery shopping process a little less stressful.
"Getting two sleepy kids through the store is a challenge in and of itself, so this is just fantastic," she said. "They can fall asleep in the car, and I can just pick up my groceries."
Through the service, registered Kroger customers order their groceries online at www.kroger.com/clicklist, schedule a pickup time - orders must be placed at least four hours in advance - and receive their groceries at a designated ClickList pickup area at the location. It has a $4.95 service fee, unless the customer orders three items or less.
The strength of the service is in the time it saves, said George Anderson, e-commerce manager for Kroger's Mid-Atlantic division. Customers don't have to spend hours wading through the aisles and searching for what they want on the shelves, which he said cuts down the average time spent shopping for groceries from two hours to 30 minutes.
"Kroger's had to change with the times since 1883," said Anderson, referring to when the first Kroger opened. "If we don't change, we die. And our customers have been asking for this now for a number of years since they've experienced online shopping."
Customers took a liking to the service on its first day in Charleston. The location received 34 ClickList orders for its first day, a record for the Mid-Atlantic division, according to Kroger Field Specialist Jason Talerico.
The No. 1 demographic for ClickList ordering is mothers with small children, although the service is also popular among young professionals, the elderly and the disabled, Anderson said.
In between ordering and pickup time, ClickList specialists go through the aisles to gather whatever items are needed for multiple customers at once and store them until they arrive. Customers park at the pickup area, pay for their groceries and associates will put the bags in their car. Twenty jobs have been added to the MacCorkle Avenue location specifically for this process.
Hot food items currently are not available to be ordered through ClickList. That also goes for alcohol, tobacco and pharmacy prescriptions because of West Virginia regulations.
Will other Kroger locations in the rest of West Virginia add online ordering? Anderson said that is the hope. ClickList has been growing fast, with Barboursville, Charleston, Clarksburg and Morgantown all getting the service at one of their Kroger stores in the past three weeks.
Kroger factors in demographics and buying habits to determine which location will next receive ClickList, according to Anderson. But store space is the most vital factor, with ClickList parking spots and a room for the ClickList team to operate out of being a necessity.
"We have some stores in Charleston where we would love to put it in, but they are limited on space and parking," he said. "So we're going to have to think out of the box. We maybe can't do it in the store, but maybe in a space leased next to it."
Reach Max Garland at max.garland@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @MaxGarlandTypes on Twitter.