10 Items or Less: Who Doesn’t Love a Smile?

The Instacart community is as diverse as the items in the grocery store — every day, tens of thousands of individuals shop, deliver, and become an extension of people’s households. We want to share this community’s stories, highlighting Instacart shoppers, shift leads, and site managers all across North America. 10 Items or Less is a series featuring just some of the amazing members of the Instacart community, sharing their unique experiences and secret sauce with the world.

1. What’s your name and where are you from? My name is Kayla, and I’m from Warminster, PA.
2. How long have you been shopping with Instacart? I’ve been shopping with Instacart since December 2020.
3. Why did you decide to start shopping with Instacart? I decided to start shopping with Instacart because my family and I became homeless during my junior year of high school. Instacart was a way for me to get back on my feet, go to college, and still help my family out when they need it. Instacart helped me move forward after years of defeat.
4. What’s your favorite thing about shopping with Instacart? When I am able to find everything that a customer requested and get to that final delivery stage and dropoff, I feel like not only did I get in a good workout, but I also helped someone with a tight or busy schedule.
5. What 3 items are always in your personal shopping cart? Eggs, milk, and bread of all varieties.
6. What’s a shopping tip that a lot of people might not know (your “secret sauce”)? Pull products from the back of the shelf. Most grocery stores follow a FIFO (First In, First Out). This means that the products in the back, especially when it comes to things like meat, were just put out onto the shelf. So, to give customers the best product, I pull from the back.
7. Do you have any relationships you’ve made while shopping with Instacart? Not yet, but customers are always kind to me and appreciate what I do – especially senior customers!
8. What’s your most-used Instacart emoji? The smiley face 🙂 Who doesn’t love a smile?
9. What’s your “side dish” — a hobby, a hidden talent, another job you do on the side? I work as a receptionist for a manufacturing company that makes control boards for our military for land, sea, and air!
10. What’s one piece of guidance or encouragement you would give to the shopper community? Stay calm. It might seem very stressful in grocery stores especially if you really can’t find an item. If I can’t find an item, I’ll skip it and then go back and really look to see if I missed it the first time when scanning quickly, similar to skipping a question on a test you don’t know the answer to right away. Maybe it’s in a different aisle, or maybe you just need extra time to go back and really look and see if it’s in stock or not.

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Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.