We tested Target's new delivery service: Paying more to save time

Joan Verdon | NorthJersey

I made a grocery list on my phone and Target, through its subsidiary Shipt, delivered. But it couldn't bring me my family's Holy Grail of grocery shopping: Boar's Head Pepperhouse Gourmaise.

Target and Shipt launched their speedy, on-demand, shopping service in North Jersey on Thursday. I put them to the test to see if they could keep their advertised promise of same day grocery delivery, with items hand picked by a trained shopper at my local Target store, not shipped in a box from a warehouse.

Shipt, which Target acquired in December, is part of Target's strategy for adapting to the Amazon era we now live in, with consumers expecting to be able to shop from their phones and get the goods quickly.

Shipt scored a five-star rating from me on speed, quality, and the super shopper who filled my order. But the convenience comes at a price that not everyone will be willing to pay.

Related: Target takes aim at Amazon with same-day shipping in New Jersey

Shipt has been called "the Uber of shopping" and it uses a business model similar to the ride-sharing company. Customers download the Shipt app, enter a credit card and click on lists of products offered for sale. Shipt shoppers, independent contractors who get paid to fill your order and deliver it, use a separate app to accept jobs.

I placed my order at 9 a.m., selected the first available delivery time, between 11 a.m. and noon, and my 14-item grocery list arrived at 11:30. Not only did I get fruits and vegetables that met my picky standards, I also got to meet Kelly, the best part of the Shipt service.

Here's how my Shipt experience unfolded.

Downloading the app

Shipt delivery customers pay a membership fee, either $99 annually, or $14 monthly, to get free delivery. New users are offered a two-week free trial, which I accepted. Shipt is also offering a discounted annual membership price of $49 in new markets, but I wasn't given that option when I registered.

After entering my credit card information and address, I was ready to shop.

The app has categories like Bakery, Produce, Dairy, Deli, and Household Essentials. Search something like apples and photos of different options pop up.

If you don't find an item on the Shipt product lists you can enter a special request.

Just to make things interesting I put in three special requests for items not on the Shipt product lists: the Earl Grey tea, Flatout Southwest Chipotle Flatbread (They had other flavors of the Flatout brand listed, but not this one), and a mission impossible level request from my husband, Boar's Head Pepperhouse Gourmaise, a gourmet mustard sometimes found in supermarket deli departments, and an item he has searched for and failed to find in many North Jersey supermarkets.

I also included produce items I am fussy about, and always want to pick out myself - apples, a cucumber, berries, cauliflower, tomatoes.

It took me about 15 minutes to finish shopping and place my order at 9 a.m.

I selected the earliest delivery window, between 11 and noon, which meant a wait of at least two hours for delivery.

At 10:29 I began receiving cheery texts from my Shipt shopper, who was selecting my items. Her name was Kelly and I later learned she was shopping for me at the Hackensack Target, the closest Target to my Teaneck home.

Kelly texted me if she couldn't find a particular item and cleared all substitutions with me.

The Pepperhouse Gourmaise stumped Kelly, who enlisted Target employees to help her search for it. There is no known substitute!

Then, after texting me that she had paid for my order and that she was on the way, Kelly arrived at my door.

I revealed that I was a newspaper reporter who planned to write about my experience and asked if she minded being photographed. Kelly revealed that she was Kelly Gorney, an experienced Shipt shopper from Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Grand Rapids is one of the friendliest places on earth and it was my home for four years as a cub reporter so we bonded instantly.)

Shipt didn't know they were sending Kelly to a reporter. When orders are placed, the shopper only sees the address initially, and then gets the first name of the customer when it is time for the text exchanges to begin. She said as orders were coming in to the Hackensack store a team leader noticed my order hadn't been taken yet and suggested she fill it.

Kelly said she began shopping for Shipt after retiring as a home-based child care provider. She was looking for something to do and said Shipt has been a perfect fit. "I felt kind of lost after I retired and this came along and saved me." She said likes the people she meets doing it.

"I thought at first my customers would be a lot of homebound people, but it is also people who just don't like to shop, or who just don't want to do it, or are busy," she said. She said she likes being of service and getting to know her repeat customers.

Kelly said that like me, she is "really picky with produce." To find the perfect cucumber she delivered to me, she said, she picked up the entire box of cucumbers and sorted through it.

Julie Coop, public relations manager for Alabama-based Shipt, said in a phone interview earlier Thursday that Shipt shoppers can make as much as $25 an hour. After selecting the items, Shipt shoppers check out the purchases the same way any shopper would, but they use a reloadable Shipt card to pay. The Shipt shopper never has access to the customer's credit card information, Coop said.

Shipt runs criminal background checks on its shoppers and screens them thoroughly. Customer rankings also weed out bad Shipt shoppers.

I gave Kelly five stars.

The conveniece was great. If it is hard for you to leave home, or if time is most valuable to you these days than money, you'll like Shipt. Your experience will depend, however, on whether Shipt can recruit enough local super shoppers like Kelly to make the service run smoothly.

Bargain shoppers will balk at a few things: the membership fee and the prices, which are slightly higher than you would pay for the same item if you picked it up in the store yourself. Shipt acknowledges that members pay about $5 more for an order that would cost $35 if they picked out the items themselves in the stores.

Line item comparisons of Shipt and store prices by reporters in other parts of the country have found Shipt prices typically run 50 cents higher per item.

Shipt members get free delivery for orders over $35. Orders below that amount are charged $7.

My 14 items cost me $64.94. plus $1.32 in tax. The app gave me the option of adding a tip and I did, bringing my total to $76.26. That seemed like a lot for this amount of groceries, but the jumbo packs of paper towels and toilet paper accounted for about $35, or almost half.

I also could have ordered small electronics items like headphones, batteries or an Amazon Fire TV Stick for home delivery. Toys also can be delivered by Shipt.

Do I like Shipt enough to pay for an annual membership? At this point I think I'd only sign up if I could be guaranteed to get Kelly each time I ordered.