I saw an ad for Thrive Market, and checked it out. It's non-perishable food and household products, plus a frozen seafood and meat option. Some of the products are sold at a discount in comparison to, say, Whole Foods or Publix. I did enough research to confirm that this is true. The downside is that there is a membership fee, like Costco or Sams, and it's $60 per year. To my benefit, they offer a program for potential customers in need called Thrive Gives. I figured if anybody qualifies, it's me (being both rural and poor, not to mention sick), so I applied and was approved within three days.
I placed my first order yesterday. Here are a few of the products I ordered:
I could not be happier that they have my soup base, ginger candy, Dolmas, and even my favorite cashew milk! That was the selling point for me most of all. I can tell you that those Dolmas cost a lot more at other stores, because I recently paid nearly double (!!) the price. Even the Gin Gins are cheaper at Thrive than the discount store I used to buy them at.
They gave me an additional 30% off select items, and they're telling me I saved $45.38. I happen to think it was more like $49, actually, based on the prices at my local stores. So that's pretty cool.
I like that they take PayPal. That's an easy and fast way to pay.
They have filters on their site that allow you to search by specialized diet. For example: Paleo, Keto, Gluten Free, FODMAP, etc. I thought that was nice. They also have their own brand of products like grocery stores do.
They were sold out of many, many things due to the pandemic. That is understandable. The only true complaint that I have is that their site lags pretty badly. At one point, I had to back out and start over because it just wouldn't cooperate. It's possible that they are experiencing high traffic (thus so many products being sold out), which would explain the lag issues. I'll see how things go next time.
At any rate, I wanted to give a short review and let people know that thrivemarket.com exists and they have a program for customers who are at-risk of not being able to buy healthy groceries. I am grateful they gave me a free membership, and I wanted to appreciate them publicly.
I was not compensated in any way for this review, as I never am for anything I promote here. They won't even know about this post unless they find it on their own, haha.
During a pandemic, staying away from grocery stores is ideal for someone as high risk as I am, needless to say. Three cheers for 4G internet (I don't even have Wi-Fi, folks, I did this all on my phone...which is actually my aunt and uncle's phone come to think of it. *deep breaths*).
I'll give an update when my order arrives. Maybe I'll do an unboxing video.
