How to buy food online during the 2021 Covid-19 outbreak, and after

We all know FoodPanda and UberEats for restaurants, but several grocery stores offer delivery as well. FocusTaiwan wrote a good article about it. I’ve tried several of these and others (because I was lazy long before the outbreak) so I’ll add my experience. Please fill in the blanks with yours or places I’ve missed. One issue, for pandemic prevention, many of these are not accepting cash on delivery.

Carrefour
https://online.carrefour.com.tw/us/

Carrefour is the best of all of them, and the cheapest overall. The site is easy to use, and they have an English language option so you don’t foul up an order or registration. You should still put your address in Chinese as well as instructions to drivers. The English translations of products are hit and miss, so if you can’t find something switch to Chinese.
Normally, they accept COD, but now only credit cards, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, JkoPay, and Line Pay. Deliveries over 899 are shipped free.
In this second week of L3, my last order was delayed 4 days. Their texts say 3-5. Normally you can choose a period of time to ship, now it says “Anytime”. Finding a day for shipping is difficult. You’ll get a lot of errors saying you can’t place an order for that day, but you can still place an order (this may be fixed by now). If you do click to checkout and it says the max number of orders for your chosen day, you have to keep choosing different days until you find one with an empty slot. Plan in advance and place an order for each week for things you need. If every day is full, the furthest possible day will be added after midnight. Get it first.

Carrefour also has 2 hour (expect same day now) delivery on some products, but only in areas near the hypermarts. You can also order some Carrefour products through UberEats in a wider area with delivery in about 2 hours. FoodPanda delivers for them as well.

A Mart is actually part of the Friday conglomerate. The direct link for just A Mart is here:

Or all of Friday, which includes City Super:

I tried this, but didn’t place an order. It’s not as convenient as frozen and cold items and everything else are shipped separately, so it’s harder to get to up to the free shipping total, especially when so much is out of stock. They do offer full contain loads (FCL, buying in bulk) to save money. Carrefour normally does, but has removed this option recently.
A Mart/Friday accepts credit cards, ATM transfer, Line Pay, and whatever HappyGoPay is.
A Mart/Friday is the most expensive I’ve found for most products.
FoodPanda delivers A Mart products. Uber Eats delivers from City Super, but little is available.

PXMart

I haven’t tried it, but they seem to have fewer products. No soda. I didn’t register so I don’t know about payment or free shipping.

RT Mart:
Seems high priced. Have not ordered from yet because much of what I want is out of stock. Free shipping over 1000. Apparently they only take credit cards, but that might depend on what you order.
UberEats delivers RT Mart products.

Costco:
You know it or you don’t. Cathay United Bank credit card or you’re out of luck.

This was mentioned in the FocusTaiwan article. I didn’t try it, but it looks like you can get products in bulk cheap, or for small amounts expensively. Good if you have a freezer.

Momo

Yeah, they have food too. Mostly dry goods. The only refrigerated think I saw was milk direct from the manufacturer. Products ship either from their warehouse or direct from the manufacturer, so you may get multiple shipments spread out over days, but all orders count towards free shipping. At most, the free shipping tier is only $490. You can have some things sent to an iMailbox if you have one near and want total non-contact with a human. They also ship some products to convenience stores.
Momo accepts credit cards, ATM, Line Pay, Google/Apple Pay, and EasyWallet.

PChome 24h
https://24h.pchome.com.tw/sign/food.htm

PC Home 24H and the original are both dinosaurs, but 24h was the fastest shipping I’ve got since L3 started. It wasn’t the next day, though, it was about 3 days later. They have almost all grocery products. They ship about like Momo, different warehouses, some things direct from the manufacturer, so many things are shipped separately. Depending on the product, they accept credit cards, Line Pay, and ATM, Google/Apple/Samsung/Taiwan Pay, Jko, and EasyWallet.

Shopee, Rakutan, Ruten, Momo Mall, Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Auctions (it won’t die)
Shopee has it’s own food warehouse (Rakutan might) and you can also buy from individual sellers on all. Some sellers have almost as many products as grocery stores. Some offer free shipping if you spend a certain amount. Home shipping is usually more expensive, especially if you order cold/frozen products. Payment options vary. All do convenience store shipping COD on some orders. Shopee, Ruten, Rakutan, Yahoo Shopping all accept ATM depending on the seller. Yahoo Shopping accepts Line Pay, Rakutan does for some sellers. I haven’t used Momo Mall ever, or Yahoo Auctions since 2005.

FoodPanda, UberEats:
Either may deliver Carrefour, RT-Mart, and A Mart products depending on the area. UberEats also delivers from Hi-Life. FoodPanda has their own food warehouse in some areas, PandaMart, which is a cheaper option than some grocery stores delivered through FP. They also deliver FamilyMart and 7-11 products.
UberEats accepts credit cards only at this time, as does FoodPanda. UberEats takes some foreign cards. I haven’t tried this, but you can buy FoodPanda vouchers though Line Pay.

FamilyMart and 7-11 also deliver directly, but I never tried.

Line Pay:
If you don’t have a credit card, this is the best way I’ve found to pay for things online without using COD. It’s in English (mostly) and you can pay by adding money directly through your bank. This requires that you have OTP set up at your bank, which you probably do if you use your bank’s app for your account. You can also pay with credit cards. You do need to verify your identity, but they accept ARCs.
Line Pay also gives you points back for purchases as some stores. You usually get 1% through Carrefour, Yahoo Shopping, Rakutan, and sometimes more if they have a special. Other stores do the same on and off. Line Shopping has their own online shopping.
EasyWallet is about the same in terms of making payment, but not widely accepted.

ATM: If you can’t go out, your can do ATM transfers on your bank’s app. You need to have OTP (over the phone) enabled on your account. You may be able to do this at an ATM, or may need to go to the bank.

That should keep you all fed!

I scanned the rules and I think this is ok, but mods can delete this last part if they want. I worked three hours on this (with the TV on, so it’s like WFH), and if you want to use them, these are discount codes that will help us both. Only good if you are signing up for the first time, click or enter when you sign up:

Shopee, this gets you 2x your order in Shopee coins, which you can use to buy things(I think! May expire):
WILLIHN3

UberEats, this gets you $100 off when you make 2 orders of $150+:
eats-tkr3a

FoodPanda, $100 of your first order when you sign up here:
https://www.foodpanda.com.tw/referral?code=296710cdb2ff72ddef30f94768dec763&geid=FP_TW

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Where do you guys get bottled water? I used to get it from RT Mart but they seem to have sold out (at least from Uber).

i get the big bottles from Hilife/711

But I am sure Carrefour will have water.

Check all the above listed links. The purpose is to give as many options as possible so everyone could find anything they need within reason. Water will absolutely be somewhere.

PXMart offers free shipping after a nominal amount (forgot how much but it was under 500). Terms and conditions may change due to the current situation, like how they have suspended 1-hour delivery.

Don’t forget about the random bring your own bottle to fill water stores throughout town.

Maybe a dumb question, but if I don’t choose same-day delivery and I choose something fresh and climate-controlled, like veggies, does that mean that Carrefour will take them out of the chilled section and put them in some waiting-to-be-delivered space for a few days, or will they take out the fresh veg only on the day it is to be delivered?

I’m wondering how safe it is to order stuff like tomatoes and broccoli without paying for same-day.

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I used to order gallons. You can buy/rent the whatchamacallit where you set it.

There are vendors that sell directly fruits and vegetables, usually by Line order and deliver. Organic produce and such.

I had used Uber Eats to order groceries last week. It was a nightmare - after adding the items and ready to checkout, I got an error telling me that the store was closed while I was browsing, and I should try another store. It happened 5 times - a complete waste of time! The next day, I tried again at 9am sharp at a RT-mart when it just opened, and the transaction was able to get through, although it was slim pickings and expensive.

I have had better luck ordering from a local grocer via LINE.

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Foodpanda also allows you to use foreign credit cards. :slight_smile:

They put it in the box before they deliver it no matter when you ordered, and they usually deliver it in a refrigerated truck, or a cooler. If you go out a lot and live in an elevator building, you can write a note for the driver saying to call you so they won’t leave it in your management room.

Yeah, that happens a lot now. The only option is to keep the items in the shopping cart, go to the listings of stores, and click your shopping cart periodically. It took me an hour to get a Carrefour order through.
A few places will allow scheduled orders. In my experience with restaurants, that’s more reliable as it puts your order in the queue in advance, and you don’t have the “no partners” problem. Carrefour does not schedule orders, I didn’t try RT.

Everything is going to be hard to get as long as people keep buying small amounts. If anyone, like me, thinks L3 could go on or go to L4, order what you can from where you can and wait. It’s better to buy a lot for later if it’s things you’ll use eventually. Ordering from Ubereats and FP is going to be very expensive in the long term.

Carrefour never works for me, in that it never let’s met actually pick a delivery slow. Always says unavailable.

Instead of giving more money to morally questionable companies like Uber, you guys can try to support local businesses and buy them directly. You can move your ass under the sun to the shops which will help you to stay close to healthy, or you can still get the food delivered but without Uber eating part of your meal and part of their revenue. For example:

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Ordering from Carrefour has been a nightmare too - you are only allowed 10 items per order for the same-day delivery option, which they charge 40 NT/order, then the most essential items, such as proteins (fish/meat/eggs/tofu) and vegetables, will be cancelled, so you end up paying multiple delivery fees and still don’t get enough food…

For the non-same-day delivery option, the delivery date I was able to pick was 2 weeks out.

I just go to the Supermarket at this rate.

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For protein shopping in a safer environment, try the smaller organic shops. Dunno where you live but here in Xindian we have one or two per block.

I saw in out community FB they have meat poultry and eggs for delivery, locally, from the market, so people don’t have to worry about ID numbers.

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For Taipei people

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Is there a link to the article this came from? There’s nothing about this on UberEats or FoodPanda. I’m not sure what to do with this information. It’s a good idea but it’s a bit late in the lockdown to try this.

It seems Taipei will try to do it.