EASTHAMPTON – Big E’s grocery store is now offering online ordering services. The store has already started to accept orders but they will officially begin on Oct 5. Customers have the option to choose store pick-up or delivery through DoorDash.

Co-owner Judi Lebel said after a few weeks into the pandemic, she, co-owner Micheal Superson, and their management team decided they needed to offer online shopping for their customers.

“We thought about just having customers call in their orders and then we would put them together but realized we really needed to have our times online so that our customers could see what to purchase,” said Lebel.

Before Lebel and her team decided to offer this service, they contacted several companies that they work with to ask for suggestions. They then researched other companies and spoke to businesses that used an outside provider for online shopping. Lebel said they then chose Rosie as their provider.

When the store started using Rosie, they were told that they would be able to have online shopping up and running in four weeks but they ran into some issues.

“We have been working with Rosie since mid-May. It’s been a work in progress, once we started, we ran across several bumps in the road. Rosie pulls information from our back end system to put on our website. All of our scalable items weren’t working so we have to integrate a new system so that our back system was compatible with our scale system and would be compatible with Rosie,” Lebel said.

Lebel and her office manager did practice orders for almost two months, correcting items along the way. In the last three weeks, they started the training process with the other employees.

“We started slowly and will be adding more order availability. They also hope to add Saturday pick-up in the near future,” Lebel said.

Customers will receive information through their circular for the week of Oct. 4 and they will start to distribute bag stuffers with information.

Pick-up and delivery are available Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Online shopping is available anytime.

Lebel said there is a $30 minimum to participate in the online services. There is a $5.95 pick-up fee, orders over $150 have no fee. Customers can use the promo code “WELCOME” for free pick-up on their first order. DoorDash has a delivery fee that starts at $7.50.

Customers will need to sign up on roseapp.com or download the app on their phone. Once you sign up, you chose Big E’s as your store and start to shop. Lebel said the customer will then choose their pick-up time or the delivery option.