Stay-At-Home Survival Guide: Delivery, Streaming And Workouts

NEW YORK CITY – As of Sunday night, New York City apartments are going to feel a lot smaller.

In the midst of the fight against the new coronavirus, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order which means, as of 8 p.m. March 22, people can only leave their homes to buy groceries, pick up medication or take exercise.

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With a few exceptions for workers deemed essential, nobody will be allowed to leave home to commute to their place of business. With schools also closed, it means those apartments' walls could soon be closing in.

Patch put together a guide in an effort to minimize cabin fever and help you maintain sanity.

Food Delivery Services:

Delivery workers have been deemed essential and continue to bring orders.

Amazon Fresh: The Amazon food delivery service allows you to find deals on produce, meat, seafood, frozen foods and packaged foods. However, to shop and get free delivery, you must be a Prime member. Amazon has also announced certain inventory items and delivery may be temporarily unavailable due to high demand.

BlueApron: The food delivery service allows you to ship all the ingredients needed to make a specific recipe, and it is still delivering. If you need inspiration, you can find weekly menu options on the BlueApron website.

Chewy: We didn’t forget about the pets. Chewy allows you to browse a wide variety of pet food for different animals and get it shipped to your door. Due to increased demand, delivery times are running longer than usual, but inventory is still available.

DoorDash: The prepared-food delivery service has waived all delivery fees and announced it has set the default delivery option to “no contact” in an effort to minimize contact between delivery workers and customers.

GrubHub: The online food delivery service is still offering delivery for restaurants across the country.

goPuff: goPuff stocks more than 3,000 products at the ready at all times, and its snack and pantry essentials delivery service is offering “Non-Contact Delivery,” in which you can provide added instructions for your delivery driver at checkout. Make sure goPuff is available in your area before ordering.

Instacart: Customers can use Instacart to shop for products from Acme, ALDI, BJ’s, Costo, CVS, Foodtown, H Mart, Petco, Sam’s Club, ShopRite, Target and Wegmans. The food delivery service has also created a “Leave at My Door Delivery” feature available to all customers. However, there have been some shortages in stock, so confirm the service is functional before delivery.

Seamless: Seamless allows you to order from a wide variety of restaurants in your area, and the food delivery service also announced recently that it’s waiving commission fees for independent restaurants.

Uber Eats: Uber Eats recently announced that it is waiving the delivery fee for customers on more than 100,000 independent restaurants in the United States and Canada. Additionally, the food delivery service is allowing restaurants to receive earnings daily, instead of weekly.

Restaurants:

Many NYC restaurants are still open, though they can only do take out orders. Search your favorite online.

Liquor Delivery Services

Drizly: The alcohol e-commerce platform lets you order a variety of beer, wine and spirits directly from retailers and ship the booze to your house. You can also get $5 off with your first order when you use the code “HELLO”.

Postmates: Postmates is making another appearance on the list, as the food delivery service also ships alcohol.

Helen’s Wines: Red wine is most likely going to be a necessity for many going into the next few weeks. The wine shop based in Los Angeles is now online and will ship inventory nationwide.

Pharmacy Delivery Services

CVS: CVS Pharmacy has waived delivery fees for prescription drugs amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Rite Aid: Rite Aid’s home delivery-service has also waived fees for eligible prescriptions.

Walgreens: Drugstore giant Walgreens announced on Friday it will waive charges for home delivery of prescription medicines.

Streaming Services

Apple TV+: The streaming service is free if you’ve recently purchased a new Apple product, and costs $5 a month to buy.

ESPN+: The sports world has come to a grinding halt, but ESPN+ offers an extensive list of sports documentaries and other features for $5 a month.

Disney+: Disney+ is free for Verizon customers who are on unlimited data plans. If you don’t fall into that category, the streaming platform is $7 per month and allows you to watch Disney’s entire catalogue, plus National Geographic, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars productions.

Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go: All three streaming services offer seven-day free trials to new signups. If you go one by one, that’s 21 days of free streaming.

Sling TV: Sling TV announced Wednesday that it is offering its content available to stream for free. No credit card or account creation is required, and you can browse live events from ABC News, movies and kids’ content.

Working Out At Home

Peloton: Peloton is offering new subscribers a 90-day free trial period rather than its usual 30-day period. You need to download the app to follow along with the at-home workouts, but the training programs don’t require a Peloton-rand treadmill or bike to participate. People looking for a sweat can try yoga, stretching, strength training and other classes.

Planet Fitness: Planet Fitness is stepping up to help people complete solid workouts at home by offering free online classes every night at 7 p.m. for the next two weeks. The workouts are led by Planet Fitness-certified trainers and are streamed on the gym’s Facebook page and Youtube channel.

Reported by Gus Saltonstall/Patch