Dorothy Lane Market Drive-Up: The Grocery Gift to Busy Moms

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Disclosure: This post is part of a sponsored relationship with Dorothy Lane Market. We love supporting local businesses we feel add real value to the lives of our readers.

As a busy mama, I’m always looking for ways to save time. As a recent inductee into the “moms of 2 or more kiddos” club, figuring out ways to save time and make my life easier has become even more important than ever before. While grocery shopping used to occasionally be a fun outing when it was just my oldest, with two kids, it’s all about the convenience factor when taking care of our weekly shopping.

Enter Dorothy Lane Market’s Drive Up service. 

I decided to give it a try for the first time on a particularly busy weekend when my mother-in-law was visiting from out of town and I really didn’t want to waste an hour or more of my Sunday at the grocery store. I placed my order on Saturday afternoon after doing my usual weekly meal planning. I love shopping at Dorothy Lane Market because of their high-quality produce and fabulous prepared foods. Knowing I was going to be shopping at DLM this week, I planned burgers into our meal plan because the burgers from DLM are second to none.

DMB Mom Tip: Be sure to plan ahead when using this service. While same day pickup may be available, it’s also possible that you may not be able to pick up your order until the next day. I ordered on Saturday afternoon during my kids’ nap time and scheduled the pickup on Sunday morning after swimming lessons. Pick up is available daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. 

The website is very user-friendly and I was able to quickly add all of the items I needed to my online shopping cart.  There are options to simply do a broad search for an item or narrow your search by department. Per the website, pricing on all items is the same as shopping in the store, including weekly Club Deal specials and bonus point items. As you add items to your cart, you have the option to indicate whether you will allow substitutions for each individual items. There’s also a spot to includes notes about an item, if necessary. For instance, when I ordered our favorite pre-made burgers (side note – we made them for dinner tonight, and the horseradish cheddar burger was To. Die. For.), I was able to note on each burger purchased the quantity of that burger. There are also notes indicating the approximate size of each item (i.e. approximately 1/2 lb of burger is equal to 1 burger, so I selected the 1/2 pound quantity for the horseradish cheddar burger and indicated that I wanted 1 burger in the notes section, and I selected 1 full pound for the Palmer burger and noted that I wanted two of those).

DMB Mom Tip: Be cautious on your quantities while ordering. While I thought I had figured out how to specify the correct quantities of each item that I purchased, I accidentally ordered just one single banana rather than a bunch. Whoops! Learn from my mistakes, mamas, and order the correct number of bananas.

When it came time to pick up my order on Sunday morning, I pulled up at my scheduled time. There is a spot out front next to the culinary center with a sign for DLM Drive Up and a phone number to call to let them know you’ve arrived. My order was brought out almost immediately after I called and was loaded straight into my trunk. Silly me, I forgot to unload my stroller from my trunk, but the woman who loaded my groceries never missed a beat and just worked around the stroller and squeezed everything in my trunk. We were in and out of the DLM parking lot in less than 5 minutes and I never had to get out of the car – or take my 3-year-old out of her car seat. It was super convenient to be able to stop by after swimming lessons, grab our groceries, and not have to unload anyone out of the car.

What busy mama can’t stand to benefit from having high-quality groceries delivered directly to her car, especially at this hectic time of year? Plus, you can feel good knowing you’re supporting a local business by staying local with your grocery shopping. It’s truly a win/win in my book. 

If you want to give the DLM Drive-Up a shot yourself, from now through October 1, DLM is waiving the fee on 5 curbside pickup orders!

Use the promo code BACKTOSCHOOL

DMB Mom Tip: When checking out, you won’t be prompted to enter a promo code until you get to the final page where you’ll confirm your order (you’ll click a button reading “proceed to confirmation”). I was worried I had missed it somewhere and clicked back because I didn’t want to place my order without my code. Don’t worry – you’ll get your opportunity to enter the code at the last step in the process.

The biggest perk of all of this, in my opinion? A shopping trip at DLM means bakery treats. Killer Brownies and Laura’s cookies…enough said. Trust me on this one – your family will thank you.