Thrive Market: What if Costco started only selling organic groceries online, and partnered with DoorDash, to deliver your groceries to your doorstep?
That’s how you can think of Thrive Market if you aren’t familiar – a membership giving you access to retail prices for organic groceries which get rapidly delivered to your doorstep.
Thrive Market is at the forefront of the the modern health and wellness movement, which is changing what it means to live, eat, and buy healthy foods.
There is a paradigm shift going on in the health and wellness movement which has rapidly accelerated over the past decade.
Ever wonder why Weight Watchers switched their name to WW? Or why McDonald’s now offers vegan and gluten free? Or why dozens food delivery apps now exist?
Now people have become a whole lot more interested and concerned about their food – from nutritional content to sustainable farming. The old ways are dying or transforming as people are becoming more food conscious!
When people become more food conscious they naturally prefer:
- Healthier foods – Less sugar and empty calories, more nutritional value
- Organic foods – People don’t want to feel guilty about purchasing foods that contribute to global warming. They value being environmentally friendly
- Convenient foods – Why food delivery apps like DoorDash are so popular
- Foods Personalized – Much more respect given to allergens, satisfaction and preferences; for example, gluten free and vegan choices are readily available even at McDonalds.
Thrive Market – the online grocery store and delivery service I review below – is the result of these trends!
So if you have been hearing about Thrive Market and you want to know how it works, and if it is the best option for you, here is a Thrive Market review covering most of the essentials and answering your questions where shopping with Thrive Market is concerned.
Organic Online Grocery Stores: Choosing the Healthier Options
In simplest terms, Thrive Market is the organic, online marketplace and delivery service connecting consumers with organic brands.
Think of it this way – Thrive Market: What if Costco started only selling organic groceries online, and partnered with DoorDash, to deliver your groceries to your doorstep?
Because food companies responded to the increased demand for healthier, organic, convenient, and personalized foods. But how do these organic products get from them to your table?
The best option is some type of an organic market. Where you can shop organic groceries all from one place and have they delivered straight to you.
The good news is, there happens to be a place you can get all your organic groceries from regardless of your choice brands and location.
In this article I will review Thrive Market, an online food marketplace and delivery service selling organic groceries at 20-50% off retail.
I’ll sharing with you my experience using the service myself, providing info about the Thrive Marketplace membership and answering all your questions!
My Experience With Thrive
My online experience with Thrive Market felt easy, clean, and intuitive.
Thrive Market organizes and makes searching for organic food brands easy. For example, you can select what you value in your food according to dietary and lifestyle preference.
I bet you can guess what I selected? High protein and organic 🙂
I easily signed up for an account and within 5 minutes had my order complete. As I ordered over $49 shipping was free. If under $49 shipping is $5.95.
Two days later I got a box my front door step:
As you can see, in my 1st order I purchased:
- Organic Tamari Almonds – I’m snacking on them right now as I write and they are quite good! Lightly flavored and crunch. Nuts are a superfood and they can be delicious too!
- Functional Coffee Creamer – I drink a few cups of coffee most days and also take Lionsmanes mushroom supplements. So when I saw a dairy-free coconut creamer with Lionsmane I had to give it a shot!
- Multivitamin Men’s Gummies – I’d been meaning to get some chewable multivitamins so figured this would be good to try.
- Whole Omega Fish Oil – I also take Omega 3 supplements, but am running low so I wanted to stock up.
- Women’s Multivitamins – It’s the holidays while I’m writing and I want to get my friend a gift. I already know she has her own multivitamins, so this is more a small gesture letting her know that I’m thinking about her 🙂
My experience went well enough! I really enjoyed the speed and ease of delivery. From a 5 minute ordering process and then two days later the groceries come in a box outside my doorstep – it felt nice.
Now I have downloaded the app and I look forward to using Thrive in the future! From checkout to delivery, everything felt seamless, very intuitive and easy.
Now when I think about going to the grocery store, I can’t help but feel a little hesitant. Do I really want to wait in those long lines?
However, I won’t use Thrive Market for all my grocery shopping because you cannot order fresh fruits, produce or vegetables.
In addition to not delivery fresh produce, I have more critiques and criticisms of Thrive Market which I’ll elaborate more down below. But first let’s take a look at Thrive Market from a big picture perspective.
Thrive Market Review: All You Need to Know the Online Grocery Store for Organic Foods
Thrive Market was created in 2014 to make organic foods accessible. They offer cheap prices for quality products.
There are two things that makes Thrive market so popular – organic groceries and retail prices.
Thrive Market offers a platform that makes eating healthy easier and much more accessible across different locations.
Organic groceries are available on wholesale pricing with minimal fees to their members who sign up after paying a fee.
How does Thrive Market work?
To utilize the Thrive Market service, you must register with Thrive Market health food store on their membership cost plan.
Thrive Market offer wholesale prices and a wide inventory of healthy, organic products at the most affordable prices you definitely cannot find in your everyday convenience stores.
When I compared Thrive market prices with other stores, truth be told, Thrive market was not always the one with the best deal with every single product but it was pretty close. You can always get access to Thrive Market in-house brands as well which are organic, healthier substitutes.
Via the platform, members can order groceries online whenever they want. Until you place an order, you can explore the catalogue.
What is on sale and what is not, as well as viewing savings of active members on the platform before making the decision to be a part of it.
Thrive Market membership stores offer wholesale pricing, excellent customer support, and—what you’ve heard of from me before — an extensive collection of goods that meet quality standards including pantry staples.
What is Thrive Market Worth?
What is Thrive Market worth? A lot. Here is why!
Thrive Market describes itself as a non-GMO fully organic online store that curates top grocery items and products from different brands and companies and makes them available on their platform at affordable prices.
With an online marketplace like Thrive Market, online shopping for top quality groceries is made easy.
Thrive market is not only health conscious but finance conscious as well, offering a 25% to 50% discount on its products to registered members.
However, to get those heavily discounted prices, you need a Thrive Market Membership, which costs $12 a month or $60 per year.
The Thrive Market Membership Guarantee – “Make back your membership fee in savings, or we’ll credit you the difference. That means if your membership fee was $60 & you only saved $40 during your membership year, we’ll automatically add $20 Thrive Cash to your account after you renew.“
Thrive Market Review: What Makes Thrive Market So Different
For starters, Thrive Market focuses exclusively on selling organic products (which is a criticism I’ll talk about later). This alone sets them apart from tons of convenience stores. While a number of stores do offer organic products, they often also sell products that are not organic.
Thrive Market is unique because they are 100% organic, and do not sell anything non-organic. Yet a USDA study found:
“Organic fruits and vegetables are almost always more expensive than conventionally grown produce. According to a study of 17 organic products, organic foods can be anywhere from 7% to 82% more expensive than their nonorganic counterparts.”
Unfortunately, Thrive Market selling organic products effectively raises prices for customers who would be fine with a lower priced non-organic product.
I am perfect example of someone who prefers to eat organic. But if a significantly cheaper non-organic option is available, I will purchase the non-organic, cheaper option.
For example, the Organic Tamari Nuts I just ordered. The ones with the delicious taste? You remember those?
I won’t be ordering those again because my normal Deluxe Nuts at Safeway, which are non-organic, I can get much more nuts for about the same price!
If you order organic, Thrive Market will save you money.
However, if you want the cheaper non-organic items elsewhere, those items will still be cheaper than what Thrive Market can offer as Thrive Market is exclusively organic.
Nonetheless, one of the distinguishing features of Thrive Market is the exclusively organic nature.
Thrive Market builds their entire operation from this foundation of organic exclusively by doubling up on the organic advantage with ease of access, delivery, best Thrive market cost, and convenience.
What can you get on Thrive Market
As we have previously established, Thrive Market is an online marketplace for organic grocery. It is basically an online version of your local health food store with healthy food options.
Basically an advanced version of your everyday convenience stores – but exclusively organic, online, and they deliver to you.
The market actually offers over 6, 000 products sectioned into a variety of categories from which you can shop and add to your cart your preferred or selected items.
Beauty and health to home and pet supplies, avocado oil, etc. You can stock up on a wide variety of things right from Thrive Market because they specialize in organic products and have them delivered to you in time!
Thrive Market also features a wide array of brand products, including some of your favorite and very popular brands on their inventory as long as they meet their standard requirements per product.
A large part of items available on the store are shelf stable items with a considerable shelf life range.
However, you can still get access to staple food like meat, cheese and seafood via the online gluten free food store.
Lactose Dairy Free Example
If you are dairy free, you can start by easily selecting this food preference from their menu. Then you’ll see a various categories of dairy free products:
- Lactose free milks
- Dairy free cheeses
You can then choose which organic products you’d like and add them to your cart. If you are ordering organic, you will save money with Thrive Market!
The Thrive Market In-house Brand
While Thrive Market makes its name by curating, displaying and marketing organic products from top brands, Thrive Market is also making a name of their own on another front.
Thrive Market is setting a trend for healthier organic meal options and they express it with an in-house brand of their own.
The Thrive Market brand is focused at packaging organic food products in environmentally friendly packaging.
These products drive towards healthier options compared to the everyday products in your everyday convenience stores.
Thrive Market Brand – Healthier Substitutes
If you are one for healthier food options, then you might find yourself constantly browsing the Thrive Market brand inventory a lot more frequently.
You really will enjoy their user interface!
Yet the Thrive Market owned brand is not just focused on building a store with whole foods, but one that helps people make healthier choices starting with their organic groceries.
Usually, when we speak of a healthier organic option, what comes to the mind of many is an expensive option.
Thrive Market ensures healthier, organic meals are available at the best prices with whooping discounts for people who sign up as a Thrive market member by paying the Thrive Membership.
So yes. That 25% to 50% gap in prices can really be the motivation for the average person on a budget to opt for an healthier, organic option.
Thrive Market says, “As a Thrive Market member, you’ll save up to 30% on the highest-quality organic sustainable products. If you find a lower price somewhere else, our low-price promise means we’ll match it. Plus, if your annual membership fee doesn’t cover your savings, we’ll credit you the difference in Thrive Cash.”
Honest Thrive Market Review
Now that we have looked into what Thrive market is and what they have to offer, I will examine the pros, the cons, the advantages and the disadvantages of shopping your online groceries at Thrive Market.
Affordability
For an online store like Thrive Market food and groceries, one will expect products to be on the expensive side, especially with their organic.
However, Thrive Market ensures the availability of top products of high quality at very affordable prices.
For starters, you can get you 10- 15 meals of fresh frozen foods at $11 to $17 per dish.
This wide protein of high quality is definitely a good deal, except of course, if you have a rod and a fishing boat and you can venture out into the sea to get some fresh fish for free!
Again, let me state the key principle behind Thrive Market’s heavily discounted pricing:
If you buy organic frequently, then Thrive Market will save you lots of money. If you don’t care about organic, then Thrive Market is not for you.
Inventory
One essential feature of a whole foods store that serves people from different locations with different interests is a rich inventory. With so many brands out there, people want to find one they are familiar with.
A rich inventory offers tons of high-quality gluten free, vegan, keto and many other diverse products from a variety of brands giving shoppers options to choose from when shopping organic groceries online.
Product diversity is very important and Thrive Market serves it very well.
You find your everyday convenience store brands listed up for purchase alongside substitutes as long as they meet the healthy requirement standard at Thrive market.
Membership fee
Thrive Market comes with a membership feature for all its shoppers to help you save money more.
It reminds me a lot of Costco 🙂
You pay a monthly or annual membership fee to access discounted prices!
The difference between Costco and Thrive Market is:
- Costco sells non-organic and organic; Thrive Market only sells organic
- Costco sells online and offline; Thrive Market only sells online
- Thrive Market delivers groceries to your door step; for the most part, Costco does not deliver
You can easily access this online organic grocery store once you try one of their flexible membership fee options. You can also sign up for free which is what a lot of people do when testing new platforms and online stores.
A free signup will enable you browse the catalogue and explore products with their wholesale prices in their categories, however you won’t be able to purchase any groceries until you get a membership.
On your first order, you get as much as %50 off, or more if you use my coupon code.
As a free member you also see Thrive Market members on the platform which is to be honest enough motivation to become a member yourself.
Thrive Market Membership cost: Is Thrive Market legit?
When you pay the membership fee which is $60 yearly membership or $12 a monthly membership, you can access groceries on the platform up to 50% off every retail purchase.
I must really sound like a broken record right now, but this is why the Thrive Market membership helps you save a lot of cash on your grocery shopping if you buy organic frequently.
When you sign up with the annual membership option, you are also contributing to help a low income family with a membership to get groceries from the organic grocery aisle store.
Trial Thrive Market Membership
Thrive market also comes with a trial Thrive Market membership option as well.
What this means is that after your first purchase, you can sign up for a trial membership which lets you explore all the benefits of signing up for a period of 30 days.
This way, you can make an informed decision. I saved an average of %15 on my first purchases at Thrive Market so there wasn’t much convincing to do for me to opt for a membership option.
Plus, I am now a fan of the delivery service! I am super impressed with the packaging, quality, and ease of my Thrive Market experience overall.
Product Quality
An online grocery store with affordability and healthier substitutes being its main selling point, there is definitely no joke with quality.
From featured brands and products to their own in-house brand, a lot of consideration goes into what should be available in the store and what should not.
So Thrive Market puts in the work to ensure that products and brands displayed meet quality standards to serve their shoppers with the healthiest grocery options for both boutique and staple foods.
Packaging
Thrive Market deals with staple, boutique and shelf organic foods so packaging is a huge deal. Quality is a huge concern with organic substitutes and Thrive Market understands this quite well.
When I checked their staple foods category, I found that Thrive market offers up to 6 different seafood options and they all came in vacuum sealed packaging for quality assurance purposes.
They also use cardboard and other environmentally friendly recyclable packaging.
Thrive Market: Return Policy
One fear that comes with shopping online is where a return policy is concerned. What if what I ordered is different from what I got?
What if I made a mistake on my order? How can I deal with a poor quality situation. Well here is what I I have found out shopping with Thrive Market.
Yes, they do have a return policy. One with a substantial return window as well. What does this mean for you? It means if there is anything wrong with your order or you have a complaint on a product and would like it returned, then you have a window to do so in 21 days.
So if an order online seems too risky for you, keep in mind that you are protected by their return policy. An organic whole foods store that values quality!
Thrive Market accommodates not just their products but other products as well. While they do have a quality check process, sometimes, with food there is never going to be perfection and there are slip ups here and there. The return policy is here to help you with these inevitable frustrations.
Thrive Market Sustainability
Thrive Market offers many environmental products that promote sustainability. Boxes used (cases and paper) are recyclable.
Overall, they provide quality packaging, excellent customer service, fresh produce and natural foods. All the items are properly packed with individually packaged items to avoid breakages during shipment.
All ingredients and meals are ethically sourced with health of the shoppers and the environment being a priority.
First Purchase Discount?
When it comes to shopping online, a seamless and affordable delivery is one thing to look out for. A lot of the time, we purchase products online we find out that the delivery fee costs a ton more than the product itself which makes us wonder if the logistics is the real profit making scheme.
With Thrive Market, asides the $25 discount on your purchase, you also get free shipping on all orders above $49! You have the option of purchasing by diet or by sorting by what you eat.
Thrive Market currently ships to all US states.
Which Membership Fee Option Works Best?
1-month membership costs approximately $12 dollars a month, and an annual membership of approximately $60.
If you want to test the waters, then the monthly membership option would work out well enough.
However, if Thrive Market is your one stop grocery shopping store for your healthy essentials or you are on a specific diet, then the annual membership fee would do you one better.
With the annual membership, you get a whole more for less and save a lot more than the ,membership fee cost itself.
Thrive Market offers free membership to market members in low-income communities. Every shopper on the platform makes this easy and possible when they opt for the membership option, either annual or monthly.
Shop By Category, Values or Deals: Products For All Your Grocery Needs
Thrive Market’s website has a wide range of amazing and affordable products. However, with so many product options available to you, how do you keep focused on exactly what you want?
Personally, I love Thrive Market, with their “high-protein” lifestyle selections which fits me perfectly, and their other brands and pantry staples.
I’ve downloaded the app and I’ve already added shredded cheese to my cart, which I like to put on salads, breads, or mix with eggs.
You have 6000 food choices here. From the daily healthy snacks to the pantry staple, there is something for everybody on this list and the search options made available by Thrive market is here to help you find just the one for you!
They have organized all their content into categories and have placed great emphasis on nutrition and value to help you stay on track.
Asides searching by category, you can also search by value or by top deals which is more convenient and organized.
Thrive Market Cost vs Local Grocery Store
For the sake of this Thrive Market review, I did try to compare the prices of groceries available on Thrive Market to those at your local store and here is what I found, and will repeat again.
While Thrive market is definitely offering you the best deals and prices on organic groceries to save money, it cannot always beat that of typical grocery stores. Especially in the case of non-organic foods which are definitely lower priced.
For some products, especially non-organic foods, your convenience store might do you one better in terms of price.
But that’s another benefit to Thrive Market – you know they are sustainably and ethically sourced!
Another thing to note here is that you cannot find all products available at your convenience store also available on Thrive Market.
Yes, Thrive Market definitely offers solid inventory of products. Sine they serve people from different locations and food interests, they cannot have every single product on the shelf, however, they try to feature as much as possible. Hence over 6, 000 products!
Thrive Market also offers you healthier substitutes for most products, especially with their in-house brands. Quality assurance is ensured with Thrive Market compared to your convenience stores and a membership savings option as well.
Is Thrive Market cheaper than Whole Foods?
This company offers products similar in quality to Whole Foods products.
Generally Thrive Market and Whole Foods are similarly priced. However, just at first glance, the prices for Schar, Bobs Red Mill Bionature, and Jovial are lower at the Thrive Market.
There are likely more brands sold on Thrive Market which are lower priced than Whole Foods as well. But I would probably still say overall Whole Foods is similarly priced to Thrive Market.
Thrive Market does have a better selection of boutique, organic products than you can get from Whole Foods, which focuses more on staples.
I find the organic, Thrive Market equally affordable with a few better product options than Whole Foods. Overall they are pretty similar in terms of products!
However, Thrive Market of course delivers where as Whole Foods does not.
Once you have your membership purchased, you can enjoy a free gift or Thrive Market coupon from time to time as well as free shipping on certain orders.
Do you save money with Thrive Market?
Yes you do and here is how. By offering best prices for organic goods, with Thrive Market, you get more for less.
Which means you can cut down that $125 grocery budget to a $100. Most overpriced organic products at stores are sold at a fair, more affordable price on Thrive Market, thereby, helping you cut down costs.
What’s more? From the free shipping to the first time purchase discounts and membership deals, you can save a whole lot more than you realize when you shop with Thrive Market.
You also get a reimbursement for all the membership costs you have not spent back. So when you actually think closely about it, as a free member, that free shipping and $25 off first purchase is really something.
When you become a member, it is even better. You get more than you paid for membership back on discounts and savings with Thrive Market.
