Online food orders for relative hours away

[itsawindyday2024]

I need to start ordering food for an elderly relative who lives hours away. The problem is, I can't see whats in their fridge and when I ask what they need they say they don't know! They have carers starting soon but they can't do a shop. They might be able to bin out of date stuff from the fridge. No neighbours or local family to help.

What do you order (has to be Tesco) and how often for a single older person? How do you know what they need? I'm used to buying for more people. They need all their food not Wiltshire ready meals and things like that.

All shopping lists welcome. I'm stumped 😆

You don't know? Can they have a coherent conversation about what they want?

Are they able to take the items into the house from the door, I know some drivers will take shopping into a customers kitchen, but not guaranteed. You could just order staple food, bread, milk, butter, tea bags, sugar, cakes, ready meals, cheese, biscuits, tinned fruit, soup.

I do a very similar thing. With Tesco, you can add instructions for the driver, so I ask
that shopping is unloaded into the kitchen. I have also started booking the one hour slots - more expensive but I've found it easier to have more of a fixed time. I would agree with Mindymomo's list. I would also add toilet roll, kitchen towel, washing up liquid, shower gel, toothpaste etc. as needed. It also depends on how much cooking your relative can physically do themselves, as in my experience carers only heat up microwave meals and don't cook as such. I also try and plan roughly in my head food for each day and try and pick ready meals that can be microwaved from frozen, so no one has to remember to defrost food.

If you contact Tesco cs, they should be able to mark them as 'needing help' ... Ie the driver SHOULD bring it and unload it to a side.
Obviously some are more helpful than others.... Some just stand there watching you unpack!

I do this for my Dad, but before I do order I get him whilst on the phone to go to fridge/ cupboard and tell me what he has. I know this sounds obvious but if i just ask what he needs he forgets this way I get a live update on the food situation! I get a mix of frozen ready meals, some tins (tinned potatoes are great) and some bags of salad, fresh fruit and some wee tubs jelly and fruit or custard. Everything easy to heat up or prepare

Thanks these are really good ideas! I didn't think of tubs of jelly etc, they'd really like them.

@idontlikealdi coherent conversations are kind of difficult. "i've got soup" "what does it say on the front?" "chopped tomatoes" "ok that's not soup I'll order some tomato soup" continue for 45 minutes until one of us falls asleep or implodes 😂

Don't forget loo rolls, kitchen roll, washing up liquid, scourers, binbags. Also might like crackers, cold meats, pickles.

Are they able to face time? They could show you what’s in the fridge if they could manage that.

Certainly not able to facetime unfortunately. That would make life alot easier - point the camera at the fridge, cupboards etc!