Monday, the 13th of July 2026, marked a new era in Mr G's shopping: his groceries were about to enter the digital age!

The regular mission beneficiary, well known to a group of West London GoodGymers for his unusual "book of labels" shopping list, artistic flair, and razor-sharp wit, decided to switch to online shopping. His objective was to supplement, rather than entirely replace, the end-of-the-week GoodGym shopping missions. The hope was that Mr G would be able to buy food more independently, including larger quantities of store cupboard items he couldn’t carry home himself.

Sevan and Kash signed up for this quest to render themselves obsolete as Mr G's shopping helpers - or at least reduce his dependence on GoodGymers' weekly availability.

Two GoodGymers and the beneficiary sat together around a 15-year-old laptop that dictated the pace of the mission, suspensefully displaying a blank browser window for long stretches, keeping everyone on the edge of the fashionable 1930s chairs.

The good news was that Mr G (or someone acting on his behalf) had already set up a Sainsbury's customer account, filled in his address details and special instructions to carry the purchased goods upstairs. Mr G even had the correct details recorded to log into the account. He had also already added a few items to his virtual basket.

During the mission, the GoodGymers introduced Mr G to the ease of using the search box rather than looking up items by category. The gentleman went through the user flow himself with minimal guidance, although he couldn't resist commenting on the website's UX and advertising from the perspective of a former professional in the display and sale of high-end products.

Some of the items Mr G selected for his basket reflected what Kash, Alan or others regularly used to buy in the physical Sainsbury's, but there were also items Mr G wouldn't always have on his weekly list. Chicken korma ready meals turned out to be a huge disappointment, as there were no such products available without a ton of rice in the portion, no matter whether one looked in a store aisle or on Sainsbury's website. There were difficult words like quiche to type and important choices to be made about the toilet paper.

"Cheap, but not just the cheapest one - that looks abrasive!"

Mr G was quick to make decisions about the product alternatives.

"I don't want the Taste the Difference - I cannot taste the difference!"

Eventually, the trio arrived at the checkout. The checkout had even more distractions than the product pages and countless screens to click through, evading the retailer's attempts to sell Mr G even more stuff.

The last hurdle, after selecting the delivery slot, was entering the payment details and navigating the credit card’s two-factor verification, expertly guided by Sevan. In the end, an order confirmation page appeared, resulting in an explosion of cheer entirely unrelated to the World Cup.

The delivery slot was diligently noted down. It was a successful "dry run", as Mr G put it - hopefully just the beginning of an era of greater independence. The gentleman felt much more confident about online shopping after going through the process once, but would love to have someone beside him one or two more times to become more familiar with the flow.