Martie Review - My Honest Thoughts and Experience

Have you heard of Martie yet? They are an online grocery store committed to reducing food waste and saving you money while making good food more accessible!

Founded by Louise and Kari, their goal was to make a positive impact in improving food security by offering high quality food at a discount. They do this by reselling perfectly edible and nutritious food that is nearing its short coded expiry date (within a few months to a year or so) that would otherwise be sent straight to a landfill by a typical grocery store.

Martie kindly offered me a credit to try the service but I have since placed two additional orders myself and have been more than impressed every single time. So let’s dive into my review!

What I Loved About Martie

So I could gush about what I love about their mission all day long, but what about my ordering experience? Here are the top things I loved:

1. No Subscription

Martie is not a subscription service – you don’t have to pay a fee to access the marketplace (like with Thrive Market, for example) and you’re not expected to make any type of purchase regularly.

2. There have lots of new inventory and brands regularly.

Martie sends out their daily deals and I look forward to checking out what new products and brands they have! I’ve found it great for getting big discounts on top brands. We typically shop organic in my house as often as possible and we’ve gotten some great discounts on lots of products and brands we buy regularly.

3. The discounts.

This was a recent order from May:

Honestly, I felt like I got such a good deal! My kids love YumEarth Giggles and we had purchased similar packs at Whole Foods for $12.99 each! For two it was $26! That’s pretty close to just half of the total cost of this order on just two products. I liked getting to try new brands and products from brands we already love at a really great price.

4. Sustainable packaging.

I won’t say this is 100% a deciding factor for me to purchase from a brand or not, but I do love when companies use easily recycleable or reusable packaging in their shipping. I do try to avoid unnecessary plastic.

5. The website tell you the “best buy” date before you order.

I do LOVE this feature, however. When you are purchasing food that’s meant to be used quickly, it’s nice to know when it will “expire” by!

For example, some things we might eat very quickly, like the applesauce pouches above, and it’s totally fine if they expire within a month. But to use up something like a bottle of sauce or a multi-pack of ramen, I might need a month or more to get through. Plus, we might not open it right away so I’d like to have a few months before it expires.

I love that the website tells you when the food should be eaten by before you order it! There are no surprises. Here’s an example:

6. Lots of brands we already love and some we’ve wanted to try.

One thing I did really love when I started shopping on Martie was that there were so many brands we already buy from on the website!

In my first order, I was able to get things from Good Pop, Simple Mills, Yo Mama’s, Fly By Jing, Pop & Bottle, and Annie’s to name a few brands. I also was able to try the Immi high protein ramen I’ve heard good things about at half off.

7. There are a lot of “aisles” to pick from.

If you have dietary restrictions, you’ll be able to sort and find what they have available very easily! I am generally mostly looking for snacks and pantry staples but oftentimes will look for gluten-free and keto as well. It’s good to have options and we love companies that keep this at the forefront.

8. There’s an app!

Of course there’s an app, right? This makes it super easy and convenient to shop which I love. I can easily see what’s new and ship my order when I’m ready.

What I Didn’t Love About Martie

I have to preface this by saying these are just possible drawbacks depending on how you shop!

1. High inventory turnover.

I see this as good and bad. It’s good because lots of new things are added all of the time! It’s tough as a consumer because popular items can sell out super quickly so you’ll have to act fast if there is something you really have your eye on.

I personally like to build up a cart and try to hit the $50 to get a shipping discount.

2. Shipping is not really “free.”

This is my other less desirable thing about Martie. They say “orders $50 always ship free” at the top of their pages but when you check out, what the means is that there is free base shipping over $50 but depending on your delivery zone, you might still have to pay an additional fee and there is a $1.99 handling fee added on.

In their FAQ, it reads:

Shipping Rates & Handling Fees vary based upon the size of your Martie order, plus where you live!
Our base shipping rate is $6. For orders over $50, base shipping rate is free! We charge a handling fee of $1.99 on every order to cover our operation costs and customer support expenses. There is an additional delivery surcharge ($2 – $16, depending upon where you live) added on to service areas that are further away from shipping hubs, as defined by our shipping carriers. This amount is looped into the handling fees. For more information on shipping and handling, please visit here.
By detailing out these costs, we hope to be as transparent as possible, while keeping prices as low as possible for you on the items we sell. We do not surge or hike prices on items purchased or services offered. That you can count on.

Martie’s orders are shipped from Dallas, TX. I live in Pennsylvania and had to pay a $3.99 shipping fee. I personally just don’t love this, especially because it’s advertised differently:

3. Shipping was a little slow.

I believe orders are shipped via ground so it took about a week for me to get my order each time. I would not say this is a dealbreaker by any means but it is something I wanted to point out.

Especially for buying food and groceries online, I’d like to get them fairly quickly (within 3 days or so). The processing took about 2-3 days for each order and then my order was in transit for 3-5 days.

Again, not a reason I wouldn’t shop with them but I did want to mention it in case you have a similar experience or are expecting fast shipping.

4. There’s a $25 minimum to check out.

I don’t know that this is all *that* big of a deal, but you do have to spend $25 to check out of the website as it is their order minimum.

My Final Thoughts on Martie

To summarize my final thoughts here, I am very glad to be introduced to the service. I love the mission and look forward to seeing them grow. I can see myself purchasing a few times per year as products that we love and use regularly come in and things pop up that I want to try but can’t see myself paying full price for.

They recently added skincare and beauty to their website which is awesome! I look forward to seeing them grow and watching what they do next!

Do you think you would try Martie? Here’s $5 off your first order if you’re interested!

Check out more of our foodie service reviews below:

About the Author

Nicole Booz is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of GenTwenty, GenThirty, and The Capsule Collab. She has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and is the author of The Kidult Handbook (Simon & Schuster May 2018). She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. When she’s not reading or writing, she’s probably hiking, eating brunch, or planning her next great adventure.

Website: genthirty.com