Product Profile: Instacart

 

INDUSTRY

food

Category

food/grocery delivery services

product Profiled

Instacart grocery shopping and delivery, pickup services

 

H-Score

 

42

ranked 15th of 25 within the food industry

ranked 48th of 76 overall

 

product description

 

Instacart’s main product is grocery delivery, in which they offer customers, either online or through apps, a selection of different stores that they can order from and expect delivery from within an hour. Instacart also facilitates grocery pickup, in which the customers choose what they want from the store, pay and go pick their items up after someone has gathered them. National grocery chains like Kroger, Costco and Albertsons are on the service, as well as niche stores such as HMart and Total Wine. 

Instacart offers Instacart+, a subscription service that provides for free delivery on qualifying orders and reduced service fees, for $99 per year.

 

product use

 

Customers can choose which store they want, what they want from the store and where they want to get it delivered. The app also offers grocery pickup at available stores. Customers navigate through grocery items, grouped by categories, building up a cart and eventually checking out. Instacart offers an onboarding experience that asks about dietary preferences as a way to personalize recommendations.

 

who’s affected

 

Instacart provides access to more than 80,000 stores, representing 1,400 retail partners, in North America and is available to over 95% of U.S. households.(1) It notes that the income demographics of its users are comparable to that of the US population. Instacart accepts payment through SNAP/EBT cards for people receiving food assistance in all 50 states and covers nearly 95% of the eligible population. It also provides a 50% discount for Instacart+ subscriptions to SNAP-eligible customers for 12 months.(2)

 
 

influence on health-related behaviors

 

EATING

slight to moderate positive influence

 

Instacart facilitates the purchase of grocery items and thus its impact on the healthfulness of its customers' diets is largely dependent on the choices that the customers make and its influence on those choices.

Broadly speaking, grocery shopping leads to more home-cooked meals, which, in general, have been shown to be healthier than meals eaten out or ordered from restaurants.(3-7) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(8) Instacart appears to be having an impact on the amount of grocery shopping in the US: a study found that an additional $6.4 billion in revenue (over seven years) in the grocery industry was attributable to Instacart.(9)

In Building H’s consumer research, over 90% of users of online grocery delivery services (not specific to Instacart) said that their groceries were healthier (68%) or as healthy as (23%) takeout or delivery meals.(10)

Instacart reports that 65% of all orders contained fruits and vegetables.(11) Instacart offers advertising for weighted items, which enables produce items sold by weight to be advertised on their platform in the same way that packaged goods can be advertised.(12) This addition counters a built-in bias toward packaged foods that is typically inherent in online grocery shopping platforms. One study, funded by Instacart, showed that online grocery shoppers spent a greater proportion on fruits and vegetables than those shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.(13)

Instacart organizes its online storefront into food categories, which it features on its homepage (or home screen in the app). Just as the organization and presentation of items in a physical supermarket can influence shopper behavior, Instacart’s choices about what to display most prominently can also influence behavior. At the time of review, Instacart presented items in rows grouped by categories, which vary depending on the associated retail store. The menu categories, or “aisles”, which are consistent from store to store, included, in order, “Produce,” “Dairy & Eggs,” “Beverages,” “Meat & Seafood,” “Snacks & Candy” and several other categories.(14)

Within categories, Instacart features recommended items determined by proprietary AI models that learn users preferences based on shopping and browsing (within Instacart) histories.(15)

The Instacart app facilitates home cooking by surfacing recipe ideas from publications like Eating Well, AllRecipes, Real Simple and the ingredients can easily be added to one’s online shopping cart.

Instacart offers online tools for health providers, nutritionists, dieticians and other health professionals to offer recommended recipes and tailored shopping lists to their clients.(16) Instacart facilitates healthy shopping through health tags, 23 item-level labels including allergens and dietary preferences, like gluten-free, nut-free, low-salt, low-sugar, and keto that are assigned to many of their items.(17)

Instacart has a “Ready Meals Hub”(18) to make it easier for customers to order ready-to-eat prepared meals from grocery stores and supermarkets. Prepared meals are typically less healthy than meals cooked at home with fresh ingredients, but generally more healthy than restaurant food.(19) To the extent that this feature influences users away from fresh groceries and towards prepared meals, it will have a negative influence; to the extent that it diverts users from ordering from restaurant delivery services, it could have a positive influence.

Online grocery delivery services can promote healthier shopping choices and promote access to healthier foods in transportation-scarce and low-resource areas.(20)

 

opportunities:

  • Work across the industry to pursue options to rate the healthfulness of individual food items and then integrate those ratings throughout the user experience.
  • Enable users to express preferences for how healthy they want their diet to be; align recommendations with those preferences; and provide users with feedback on how well their choices are supporting those preferences.
  • Monitor the impact of the “Ready Meals Hub” on food choices of customers.
 
 

PHYSICAL ACTVITY

slight to moderate negative influence

 

While Instacart promotes home cooking, it also potentially deters customers from the physical activity associated with grocery shopping. Instacart allows customers to shop while sedentary, which can be detrimental to physical health. Note that users of online grocery delivery services typically continue to shop in person to some degree as well, so the effect is a reduction, rather than a substitution, in in-person grocery shopping. In Building H’s consumer research, nearly half (47%) of users of grocery delivery services (not specific to Instacart) also shopped in person more than twice a month. Instacart also offers the ability to pick up orders instead of having them delivered.(21) It’s not clear how often users select the pickup option, although Instacart does offer a 5% discount on pickup orders for Instacart+ customers.

On the other hand, assuming that the grocery shopping leads to home cooking, cooking a meal certainly involves more physical activity than preparing ready-to-eat or takeout/delivery meals.

 

opportunities:

  • Consider setting pickup (vs. delivery) to be the default option, subject to conditions such as distance, weather and individual abilities.
  • Promote the pickup option as an alternative prior to finalizing a delivery order.
 
 

Sleeping

neutral influence

 

Travel time has been shown to have a negative relationship to sleep time, so the service could improve sleep for users to the extent it cuts down on trips to the grocery store and time spent shopping.(22)

Additionally, if Instacart’s service cuts down on stress related to grocery shopping in-person (travel, finding groceries in-store, time crunches, child care, etc.), it could also reduce stress-related decreases in sleep quality.(23)

Instacart has expanded its delivery hours to 24/7, with select retailers, creating more opportunities for late night deliveries.(24)

 
 

Engaging Socially

slight negative influence

 

Instacart’s service allows customers to stay at home while shopping, unless they opt for grocery pickup. As such, the service likely reduces the casual social interactions associated with trips to grocery stores. In Building H’s consumer research, 54% of shoppers (not specific to Instacart) rated these interactions positively, as compared with 9% rating them negatively.(25)

Instacart notes that most consumers and shoppers interact through the app and in person at the time of delivery.(26)

 

opportunities:

  • Offer family meal and party planning features to simplify the process of developing menus and ordering ingredients as a way to lower the barriers to hosting meals with friends and family.
  • Encourage and train shoppers to interact with customers, treating the interaction as important social contact.
  • Pursue opportunities for encouraging use of the pickup option (see above).
 
 

Getting Outdoors

slight to moderate negative influence

 

To the degree that its service cuts down on trips to grocery stores and supermarkets, Instacart could potentially reduce time spent outdoors.

 

opportunities:

  • Pursue opportunities for encouraging use of the pickup option (see above).
 
 
 

Notes

 

  1. Instacart. Direct communications, February 2022 and September, 2023.

  2. Instacart. Direct communication, September, 2023.

  3. Julia Wolfson and Sara Bleich. Is Cooking at Home Associated with Better Diet Quality or Weight-Loss Intention? Public Health Nutrition, Volume 18, Supplement 8 June 2015 , pp. 1397-1406.

  4. Junxiu Liu et al. Quality of Meals Consumed by US Adults at Full-Service and Fast-Food Restaurants, 2003–2016: Persistent Low Quality and Widening Disparities. The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 150, Issue 4, April 2020, pp. 873–883.

  5. R. An. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption and daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Volume 70 (2016), pp. 97–103.

  6. Sharon Kirkpatrick et al. Fast-food menu offerings vary in dietary quality, but are consistently poor. Public Health Nutrition. Volume 17, Issue 4 (2014), pp. 924–31.

  7. Lisa Powell and Binh Nguyen. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption among children and adolescents: effect on energy, beverage, and nutrient intake. JAMA Pediatrics. Volume 167, Issue 1 (January 2013), pp. 14–20.

  8. Arpita Tiwari et al. Cooking at Home: A Strategy to Comply With U.S. Dietary Guidelines at No Extra Cost. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Volume 52, Issue 5 (May 2017), pp.616–24.

  9. Robert Kulick. The Economic Impact of Instacart on the U.S. Retail Grocery Industry Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. NERA report, September 2021.

  10. Steve Downs. A Survey of Modern Life: Food; Delivery Apps, Meal Kits, Groceries and Cooking Dinner. Building H on Medium. January 20, 2022.

  11. Instacart. Direct communication, September 2023. Data updated as of March 24, 2023.

  12. Dani Dudeck. The Next Chapter for Instacart Health: Introducing New Technologies, New Partnerships, and New Research. Instacart website, March 24, 2023.

  13. Share Our Strength. Research Brief: The Online Grocery Shopping Study.

  14. Instacart app and website, tested October 26, 2023.

  15. Instacart. Direct communication, September 2023.

  16. Instacart Health. Instacart website, accessed November 22, 2023.

  17. Instacart. Direct communication, September 2023.

  18. Instacart. Inspiring Customers to ‘Break up With Takeout’ With the National Launch of Ready Meals. Instacart blog. January 13, 2022.

  19. Angela Fertig et al. Compared to Pre-prepared Meals, Fully and Partly Home-Cooked Meals in Diverse Families with Young Children Are More Likely to Include Nutritious Ingredients. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. February 11, 2019.

  20. Tawanna R. Dillahunt et al. Online Grocery Delivery Services: An Opportunity to Address Food Disparities in Transportation-scarce Areas. CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

  21. Downs (2022).

  22. Matthias Basner et al. American Time Use Survey: Sleep Time and Its Relationship to Waking Activities. Sleep, Volume 30, Issue 9, September 2007, pp. 1085–1095.

  23. Torbjörn Åkerstedt et al. Predicting sleep quality from stress and prior sleep – A study of day-to-day covariation across six weeks. Sleep Medicine, Volume 13, Issue 6, June 2012, Pages 674-679.

  24. Catherine Douglas Moran. Instacart rolls out 24/7 delivery. Food Dive. September 15, 2021.

  25. Downs (2022).

  26. Instacart. Direct communication, November, 2023.