Celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride Month at Instacart

This Pride Month, our Rainbow Carrots ERG (employee resource group) brought to life a packed schedule of events and touchpoints to celebrate the history, resiliency, and vibrancy of the LGBTQ+ community. The program also supported and drove impact for those facing food insecurity within the communities in which we operate.

Company Meeting
We kicked off the month with our company meeting, where our Rainbow Carrots co-leads gave a brief history lesson on the Stonewall Riots of 1969, which is the reason why we celebrate Pride in June. Most historians view the Stonewall Riots, and subsequent formation of the Gay Liberation Front, as the catalyst for the Gay Rights Movements in the US.

Pride Happy Hours
Following the company meeting, each of our three main offices (and a few of our regional locations) hosted Pride-themed happy hours for employees, featuring incredible performances by local drag queens and kings. The drag performances paid homage to the self-identified drag queens — including Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera — who were at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots.

A Penne For Your Thoughts with Hannah Hart
Hannah Hart — entertainer, food-enthusiast, and LGBTQ+ advocate — joined us at our HQ for a special fireside chat with Rainbow Carrots co-Lead Colleen Finnegan. Hannah talked about the importance of developing a self-care routine and healthy boundaries, learning how to stick to her gut (even when it means turning down opportunities in the short term), the connection that making meals together cultivates, and the importance of taking action — no matter how small it seems — with volunteerism.

Instacart Serves: Community Service Project
One of the tenets of the Rainbow Carrots is to be of service and advocate not just for our LGBTQ+ employees, but to the LGBTQ+ community at large. Food insecurity is an identity issue that disproportionately affects diverse communities, including the LGBTQ+ community — and we know that 40% of all homeless youth in the US identify as LGBTQ+. We saw an opportunity to do what Instacart does best — grocery delivery — to serve this population.

We worked with the Ally Coalition to identify service centers and shelters in our three major office locations — Larkin Street Youth in San Francisco, the Living Room in Atlanta, and The519 in Toronto. Our employees collected non-perishable grocery items via the Group Cart Feature on Instacart to donate groceries and wrote cards of affirmation for the youth that these centers serve. Our partner in SF, the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses, also joined us in this service project, donating 22 cases of organic, hearty soup to the Larkin Street Youth Food Pantry. Bi-Rite was thrilled to participate in this opportunity to work with an organization aligned with their community mission of Empowering Youth, Strengthening Community and Creating Resilience.

Later in the month, we hosted one day of the two-week-long Maven Queer Youth Tech Camp. In addition to Maven’s programming (they build a video game!), the young adults learned about Instacart from our CEO Apoorva, had 1:1 mentorship sessions with our Rainbow Carrots, and listened to a moving talk from our own Corinne McCreery about coming out as trans in a former workplace that did not support her.

Lemon Tell Ya with Corinne McCreery
Finally, we ended Pride month with Corinne sharing her story company-wide about living in South Dakota and being fired by a past employer for coming out as trans. She took the brave steps to fight back against discrimination, and with the help of the EEOC and Lambda Legal, she won a landmark settlement that set the precedent for similar cases across the country.

Thank you to the Rainbow Carrots and all of our employees who helped us celebrate the LGBTQ+ community this Pride month!

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Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,500 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 85,000 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.