Your commute to the grocery store could become a thing of the past with the arrival of Instacart.
The personal grocery service offers on-demand shopping and delivery for $5.99 per order. Frequent shoppers may pay for a year’s worth of deliveries for $150.
The concept for Instacart began five years ago in San Francisco. Since then, the company has grown to cater to customers nationwide, according to operations manager Sam Donoghue, who’s handling the launch of Instacart in the Southside on Jan. 26.
“How much time does it take you to go grocery shopping? How much is that time worth for you?” Donoghue said “This service is more than just wanting someone to pick your groceries up for you. It’s how you value your time.”
To place orders, customers use the Instacart app or website to curate a list of regularly-priced grocery items, make note of their preferences, and set the time they’d like the order to be delivered.
“It’s a sophisticated product, but it’s easy to use,” Donoghue said. “Our customers are busy parents going to dance recitals and sports practices, and young people with long work hours,” he said. “I think there is a stigma that this kind of service is not for everyone, but we want to make it as available to everyone as we can.”
To do that, Instacart has designed a user-friendly online platform and expanded their product catalog, though Donoghue noted that certain brands and non-grocery items may not be available for delivery.
“There are some restrictions, but our goal is to have every item in the store on our app,” he said. “We also have a very interactive interface that allows customers to speak with their personal shopper throughout the entire process. If they change their mind about something during the grocery run, they can easily communicate that.”
To cater to the Southside, Instacart hopes to hire 50-80 shoppers who are knowledgeable about food and customer service.
Shoppers will deliver from a variety of grocers that have entered national partnerships with the company, including Farm Fresh, Whole Foods, Food Lion, WFM, Costco, Petco, and Total Wine & More. The partnerships are mutually beneficial, and account for nearly 15 percent of grocery sales in individual stores, according to Instacart communications specialist Rebecca Silliman.
“Strong relationships with retailers is core to our model,” Silliman said. “We negotiate deals with retailers at the national level and work with them to roll out local markets. Our contracts are based on a percentage of the overall sales for individual stores.”
Throughout the country, Whole Foods has hundreds of stores under contract with Instacart, and is constantly expanding the program to cater to their customers, according to Annie Cull, senior PR specialist for the Whole Foods mid-Atlantic market.
“We want to make grocery shopping easier. For us, that means meeting our customers where they are, and Instacart is a service that can help us do that,” said Cull.
Pohl may be reached at [email protected]
