It does work for groceries, although not at a physical store, because the store is controlled by government henchmen wrt to their payments. Fwiw, one can trivially by an Amazon gift card using cryptocurrency, using which one can then pay for online groceries.
As for transaction confirmation times, there are cryptocurrencies in common use that confirm nearly immediately. The lack of your knowledge shows.
Nothing stops a physical store from accepting cryptocurrency, unless they need to also make agreements with the payment card networks.
Sure, good plan. I'll just walk into thr local CVS to buy a gift card and... oh, wait, no. Exact same issue.