My first long haul flight in 2021 is CX 844 to New York. It’s a 6-days pattern and I am very excited to fly long haul again after few months of minimal flying on short haul. While preparing and packing for the flight, I quickly remembered that we couldn’t bring any food items to US as all fruits, vegetable, meat and meat products are not allowed. The thoughts of eating only cup noodles and expensive room service for the whole trip are awful. So, I decided to do some research to find out what are the apps or website I could use to order food online and deliver to our crew hotel. To cut the story short, I discovered that it is quite easy to order food or groceries in the states and most importantly, it is actually cheaper to order online rather than bringing the same food items from Hong Kong. The following are the summaries of my search.

InstaCart

InstaCart is a popular grocery delivery service that allows us to shop from one app and get access to multiple stores including many groceries (e.g., Costco, Target, Morton, Fairway), drugs, wine and even electrical stores. We can submit an order online through their website or through the app and have the items delivered straight to our hotel. Convenient and easy but there are a few tricks:

• Before you can order, you have to register through their website or download their app.
• You need to know the postcode of the hotel we are staying. For New York it is 10018. Once you key in the code, the list of nearby stores will pop out right away and there are usually many stores available.
• At checkout, they may ask for your mobile phone number, but they only allowed 10 numbers for entry. Hong Kong phone numbers including country code has 11 numbers, so I replaced that with our hotel phone number. The drawback of this is they will not be able to contact you if there are unavailable items. This is not a big issue as they will simply remove the items from the order list.

• If you are first time user, you will get InstaCart Express membership for free for a month. This monthly membership gives you access to exclusive benefits of no delivery fees on orders of $35 or more. Having said that my order has a 6 US dollar delivery charge despite having the charge waive at checkout. I have complained to them but their reply and excuse are close to nonsense.

• Some have commented that InstaCart (including other ordering apps) does not accept HSBC and Hang Seng bank credit card for payment, so do bring an extra credit card especially Citibank credit card just in case.

• Once you have placed the order, they normally delivered within 2 to 3 hours.

• Delivery is generally without any issue if we are staying close to downtown. If you are staying further away like New York Marriot instead of AC New York Time Square, there may be limited stores available for delivery service.

For detail info on how to register and order through InstaCart app, click on the link below: InstaCart review

Amazon.com

Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh from Amazon.com offers ultrafast delivery to hotels. This service is available to all US cities that we fly to. You may consider applying for Prime Membership which is free for the first month. With the membership, there will be no delivery charge for orders above 35 dollar. I have a few friends who have used their services and they are generally consistent with the waiving of delivery charge. Just make sure you cancel the membership after a month.

Shipt

Shipt is similar to InstaCart. They have a selection of stores to choose from including Target and others but their selection of stores is fewer than InstaCart. Similar to InstaCart, they offer similar free delivery charge for the first month. A crew on my flight has ordered through this app and she did not encountered any issue with the waiving delivery charge, although delivery time is slightly longer at 3 hours.

Target

Rather than shopping through InstaCart and Shipt, we could also order directly from Target website. They offer free delivery if you buy more than 35 US dollars. This offer again is not guarantee as some crew complained that they were charged a shipping fee of 10 US dollars. With limited time and self-isolation policy, it may difficult for us to contact customer service and claim for refund.

UberEat

Uber Eats is an American online food ordering app. Key in your address and all restaurants that participate in Uber Eat platform will be shown. If you want to order only cooked food and fast delivery ( ~30 to 45 mins) then Uber Eat is the preferred platform. The drawback is the high delivery charge. Depending on the restaurant and address, the delivery charge could range from 4 to 10 US dollars per delivery. You will save more if you order more food items per delivery, so do plan properly before you order. As in any platform, occasionally you may run into some problem such as wrong food items, long delivery time, and cold foods.

These are all I could summarize and share at the moment. There are obviously more apps or platform that we could use. If you have any updated or additional info, please contact me at :

Email: kevcks@gmail.com

Instagram : @kevincrewexplorer