In many ways, 2020 has been a year of unprecedented uncertainty for most Americans. As the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the country, shutting down businesses and altering long-established daily routines, many people have had to make huge adjustments to their lifestyles.
And yet at the same time, the pandemic has created a deepened sense of routine. When you can’t plan a holiday or even head out to a movie theatre or concert, day-to-day life can quickly become depressingly predictable.
Because food is one reliable way of injecting a sense of novelty and purpose into the daily grind, it’s probably not surprising that many have turned to cooking as a way of staying healthy while breaking up their routines. And for many Americans, signing up for a grocery subscription service has been a key part of this.
The Advantages of Grocery Subscription
At a time when even a short trip to the grocery store means masking up, sanitizing your hands, and possibly even standing in line if you live in a large city, grocery delivery makes shopping significantly more convenient.
But in addition to the advantages that come with delivery, subscription services that let you order meat online or have a weekly box of vegetables delivered to your door automate the process completely. You simply set your order, and wait for your food to arrive.
Not only does this mean you always have a ready supply of your favorite foods, it also makes budgeting easier: if your subscription charges you a flat rate, you know in advance how much you’ll be spending on mail order steak this month.
How Grocery Subscription Makes Exploring New Ingredients Easier
The best subscriptions, however, don’t just make it easy for you to have groceries automatically delivered to your home. They also make it easy to change and adjust your order as you please, so you can include a little variety in each grocery box.
For example, services like truLOCAL USA specialize in delivering locally-sourced meat to customers across the Midwest. Using a points system, they make it easy to customize a meat box without worrying about driving up the price, which means you can explore meats you might not think to purchase from your local grocery store, such as:
- Bell pepper and parmesan chicken sausage
- Wild-caught scallops
- Baby-back ribs
- Wild-caught snapper
- Grass-fed beef steaks
While you can still order household staples like ground beef, chicken breasts, and breakfast sausages, the ease with which you can introduce novelty into your order without having to pay a higher price encourages exploration.
One of the biggest challenges for Americans working from home and social distancing is creating sustainable routines that still have space for novelty and excitement. If you like cooking, pushing yourself to use ingredients you wouldn’t normally try can be a great way to break up the monotony.
And if you’re looking for a little extra push to help you venture outside of your comfort zone, signing up for a subscription service can be the perfect way to do so.
