Building H Index

Instacart

INDUSTRY

food

products Profiled

Instacart grocery shopping and delivery, pickup services

H-Score

48

ranked 6th of 16 within food industry

ranked 18th of 37 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 Target and Safeway are on the service, as well as niche stores such as HMart and Total Wine. Instacart provides access to more than 65,000 stores in North America and is available to over 85% of U.S. households.(1)

product usage

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. Instacart presents users with a consistent interface across the different available grocers, organizing the items according to Instacart’s categorization and layout.

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.(2-6) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(7) Instacart appears to be having an impact on the amount of grocery shopping in the U.S.: a study found that an additional $6.4 billion in revenue (over seven years) in the grocery industry was attributable to Instacart.(8)

Instacart reports that for a recent 12-month period, 27% of all food items sold were fruits and vegetables and that 72% of all orders contained fruits and vegetables.(9)

The Instacart app surfaces recipe ideas and the ingredients can easily be added to one’s online shopping cart.

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 (67.9%) or as healthy as (23.2%) takeout or delivery meals.(10)

Instacart has recently developed a “Ready Meals Hub”(11) 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.(12) 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.

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, fruits and vegetables were displayed very prominently on Instacart’s homepage – “fresh vegetables” occupied the second row of items and “fresh fruits” the third. The other most featured categories – “treats under $5” (first) and “snacks” (fourth) – are less healthy. Instacart does not specifically offer a “healthy” category.(13)

Instacart facilitates home cooking by offering an integrated recipe service that connects ingredients in recipes to the online shopping cart.(14)

Online grocery delivery services can promote healthier shopping choices and promote access to healthier foods in transportation-scarce and low-resource areas.(15)

opportunities:

Work across the industry to pursue options to rate the healthfulness of individual food items and then consider using such ratings to give users feedback on overall healthfulness of their orders and/or propose healthy substitutions for less healthy items.
Monitor the impact of the “Ready Meals Hub” on food choices of customers.

PHYSICAL ACTVITY

neutral to slight 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 (46.8%) of users of grocery delivery services (not specific to Instacart) also shopped in person more than twice a month.(16)

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.

Sleeping

neutral to slight positive 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.(17)

Additionally, if Instacart’s service cuts down on stress related to grocery shopping in-person (travel, finding groceries in-store, time crunches, etc), it could also reduce stress-related decreases in sleep quality.(18)

Instacart has expanded its delivery hours to 24/7, with select retailers, creating more opportunities for late night deliveries.(19)

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.(20)

opportunities:

Offer 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.
Experiment with “preferred shopper” service to foster relationships between customers and shoppers.

Getting Outdoors