2023 Recap: Savoring the Year’s Product Innovations

As the year draws to a close, we at Instacart are excited to reflect on the journey we’ve embarked upon in 2023. It has been a year filled with product innovation advancements benefiting our valued customers, dedicated shoppers, brands, and retail partners alike. From developing AI-powered shopping experiences, introducing a new suite of products dedicated to businesses, and offering new ways for customers to access and save on essentials, to forging stronger connections within our ecosystem by empowering brands and innovating for retailers, we’ve remained committed to transforming how people shop.

Here’s a peek at some of the innovations that have defined this year for Instacart.

Convenience

Earlier this year, we launched Ask Instacart, a first-of-its-kind AI-powered search tool designed to assist with customers’ grocery shopping questions – saving them time, inspiring their routine, and helping them make food-related decisions by offering personalized recommendations throughout the shopping experience. In addition to developing our own customer-facing experiences in the Instacart app, we also debuted our ChatGPT plugin that serves up a recipe alongside all of the needed ingredients — delivered in as fast as an hour in just a few clicks.

We also introduced Instacart Business, a new suite of products dedicated to helping local businesses save time, save money, and stay focused. Instacart Business allows purchasers easy access and affordable selection from retailers they already trust – with no monthly minimums, no additional contracts to shop and same-day delivery that allows businesses to “skip the ship” on prohibitive delivery fees, bypass costly employee runs to the store, and stock only the inventory they need at a given time. Since its launch, Instacart Business has partnered with real estate company, Hines, the national network of coworking spaces, Industrious, and employee meal benefit platform, Sharebite.

Selection

We have unmatched selection in grocery, partnering with more than 1,400 retail banners across more than 80,000 locations that collectively represent more than 85% of the U.S. grocery market. It’s our goal to provide a wide selection of services and products from each store to deliver the best shopping experience for our customers, which is why we continuously focus on new integrations. From adding hundreds of new retailers to the platform like Camping World, Giant Eagle, Kiehl’s, and PetSmart, and, to offering new loyalty programs as well as virtual convenience, prescription, floral, and made-to-order items services at existing storefronts, we made significant updates in 2023 to deliver value to both our customers and retail partners.

Quality

In 2023 we also invested in new products, features, and fulfillment methods to deliver the absolute best experience for our customers. We made several updates to how product results are surfaced and organized by making improvements to item-level information including high-in-stock, low-in-stock, produce ripeness, and a ‘recently bought’ item tag so that customers have additional item information and the ability to customize their selections. We also rolled out Adaptive Search, which provides customers with a more tailored search experience based on how specific their intent is by offering up targeted product results when they know exactly what they want, and a variety of categorically-organized product results when they have a broad query. We have also made the delivery process more convenient than ever by improving delivery times to less than 50 minutes for our priority delivery option, allowing customers to get their groceries as quickly as possible.

Access & Affordability

Since introducing Instacart Health last year, we have created a meaningful shift in the discussion about the concept of food as medicine by building the tech and tools that these programs run on. Imagine a world where patients arrive home after leaving the hospital, and find an assortment of groceries waiting for them on their doorstep that were curated and prescribed by their doctors and covered by insurance. Through partnerships with payers and providers including Boston’s Children Hospital, Medically Home, and  Mount Sinai Solutions, Instacart is making this a reality.

Another major focus for Instacart Health in 2023 was expanding access and payment acceptance for nutritious foods online. This year Instacart became the first online grocery marketplace to allow customers to pay with SNAP benefits in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and also introduced the ability to use Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) at checkout helping customers eliminate the need to manually submit receipts for reimbursement.

For our customers, access to affordable fresh groceries and everyday essentials has never been more important, and we want them to be able to take advantage of all of the deals on Instacart. In 2023, we made several changes to bring deals front and center with new opportunities to save, including shopping from stores to help save money and new retailer loyalty programs, personalized deals based on our AI recommendation system, stock up and save promotions from favorite brands, and budgeting tools so there are no surprises at checkout. 

Empowering Brands

In 2023, we continued to strengthen the core of Instacart’s advertising business, helping consumers build their shopping baskets with new ad experiences that inspire discovery. Some of these inspirational experiences include Impulse placements at the end of a shopping trip and first-of-their-kind PLU placements that elevate fresh produce.

We also unlocked entirely new channels for CPG brands to grow with our new co-marketing offering and investment in off-platform advertising capabilities via partnerships with Roku and a global ad tech leader The Trade Desk. We also announced that a consumer-favorite grocer Sprouts is powering its new retail media network with Instacart’s Carrot Ads offering, as well as Price Chopper NY and Tops Market.

We’re also proud to have invested in helping innovative, emerging brands onboard and grow with Instacart. We announced new tools designed specifically with emerging brands’ needs and challenges in mind, including a new discovery portal called Brand Explorer, where retailers can find and source brands’ sell sheets directly within Instacart’s platform. 

Innovating for Retailers

At Instacart, we’re focused on building the best comprehensive omnichannel grocery platform that creates seamless, convenient, and personalized experiences at every step of the shopping journey. This year we made major updates to Instacart Storefront, including AI-powered conversational search that bring the “Ask Instacart” capabilities from the Instacart App to retailers’ own e-commerce storefronts, and In-Store mode, which turns retailers’ apps into a companion as they shop in stores. 

In-Store mode helps customers see what’s in stock, view important details about items on their list – such as nutrition information or whether they’re EBT SNAP-eligible – get product recommendations, sort items by aisle, and access in-store promotions and discounts. It also helps retailers better understand their customers, regardless of if they shop online, in stores, or both.

We announced major updates for our latest model of Caper Carts. Even more exciting than the specific product updates, though, is the fact that the adoption of Caper Carts is building momentum. We announced a number of new deployments with retailers, including Schnucks, Wakefern, and Geissler’s — who are replacing the majority of their traditional shopping carts with Caper Carts over the coming months.

Building on Shopper Commitments

In 2023, we introduced more than 25 new product updates for the shopper community, as we built on the shopper commitments we introduced last year to further improve the shopper experience across four key areas of focus — ingredients to earn on your terms, support while you shop and beyond, a community built on best intent, and recognition and rewards for the best of the bunch.

From signing in to delivery, we want to simplify every step of the shopping process so shoppers can focus on what they do best: providing excellent service to their customers. We improved the login process for shoppers by introducing passkeys, a faster, more secure login process that eliminates the need to remember a password or having a two-step verification by using a device’s facial recognition and fingerprint identification features.

This year we also invested in meaningful additions to Cart Star, a shopper rewards program that recognizes work on the Instacart platform. New changes that recognize the shopper community include refreshed rewards for each Cart Star tier and a new feature called Platinum Protection that ensures eligible shoppers will not drop below Platinum Cart status.

Instacart

Author

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.