Introducing New Instacart Pickup Retailer Models

At Instacart, we work closely with more than 500 local, regional and national retailers to create a seamless online grocery shopping experience for customers across North America. When it comes to online grocery, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for retailers. Over the last year in particular, the grocery industry has gone through an accelerated transformation requiring retailers to reimagine the shopping experience for their customers and explore new approaches.

One of the ways we’ve seen grocers step up to meet the surge in customer demand is through the growth of curbside pickup services like Instacart Pickup. Today, we power curbside services for more than 60 grocery partners, including ALDI, Food Lion, Publix, Sprouts and Wegmans. In 2020, we launched Instacart Pickup services across more than 2,000 new retailer locations, making the service available today at more than 3,300 stores across more than 30 states.

As Instacart Pickup continues to scale and we focus on making it more accessible in 2021, we’ve begun testing a number of new pickup solutions with our retail partners designed to support their changing needs as grocery ecommerce becomes even more integral to their businesses. As part of our ongoing efforts to uniquely support each of our retail partners, we’ll now be offering two distinct Instacart Pickup models — Partner Pick and Instacart In-Store Shopper Pick — as well as testing in select markets a new feature that enables full-service shoppers to fulfill pickup orders.

Moving forward, several Instacart partners will be transitioning to a Partner Pick model for Instacart Pickup orders. Through Partner Pick, retail employees will utilize Instacart’s new pickup technology built specifically for each retailer to enable them to fulfill Instacart Pickup orders for customers. Second, with some retail partners, we’ll continue to invest in and support their pickup service with Instacart in-store shoppers who pick and pack groceries in many regions across the U.S. Finally, in order to meet growing demand for pickup at other store locations, we’ll be piloting a new feature for full-service shoppers with a number of other retail partners. As part of this pilot, full-service shoppers at select retailer locations will be able to choose orders to pick, pack and stage — no delivery required. For all of these retailers, Instacart full-service shoppers will also continue to be available to pick and deliver groceries and goods for delivery customers.

As a result of some grocers transitioning to a Partner Pick model, we’ll be winding down our in-store operations at select retailer locations over the coming months. We know this is an incredibly challenging time for many as we move through the COVID-19 crisis, and we’re doing everything we can to support in-store shoppers through this transition. This includes transferring impacted shoppers to other retailer locations where we have Instacart in-store shopper roles open, working closely with our retail partners to hire impacted shoppers for roles they’re looking to fill, and providing shoppers with transition assistance as they explore new work opportunities. We’re also providing all impacted shoppers with separation packages based on their tenure with Instacart.

These changes come as part of Instacart’s ongoing commitment to innovating for our partners, providing an essential service for our customers, and supporting our entire Instacart shopper community for years to come as our business continues to evolve in support of the entire grocery industry.

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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.