My chronically ill readers are going to love this.  Busy mamas, you’re going to love this.  People with small children who have to be wrangled into and out of winter gear at every stop will love this.  I’m talking about a service called Instacart, which will do your grocery shopping for you.  

So let’s talk details.

Where?

Okay, first things first.  Instacart (unfortunately) is not available everywhere.  So before you get all excited and read through all this nitty-gritty, you probably should pop on over there and enter your zip code to find out.  But then come right back, because I’ve already slogged through all the details and crunched numbers so you don’t have to.  If they don’t have your area yet, don’t lose heart!  I only just tried the service for the first time last week, because when I checked a couple months ago, it wasn’t here yet.  So they’re growing steadily!

In my area, the stores available for delivery are Aldi and Costco, which is perfect.  Aldi is our ideal “stock up” grocery store, and Costco is great for some bulk specialty items.  Even better, since I wasn’t the one doing the shopping, I didn’t have to have a Costco membership.  Which makes this great for people who only need to pick up a few things here or there and really don’t spend enough to warrant a membership.

How Does Instacart Work?

You go online and place your order on the Instacart website.  You choose when you want it to be shopped and delivered, based on the times your local shoppers are available (and stores are open, obviously).  When I did this last week, I was able to everything delivered within 24 hours, and one store was even available for delivery within just a few hours.

If  you don’t see something listed on the website, you can enter it as a special request for your shopper to look for.  For each item, you can specify what should be substituted if it isn’t available (or to just skip it).  Don’t be a jerk to your shopper, please!  But you have some flexibility.  My shopper substituted one package of baby food for another (as I had indicated), skipped a couple items that were out of stock, and located the product I’d special-requested (calling me to verify that it was right).

All I had to do was order everything online, then put the groceries away when they showed up.

What’s the Catch?

You’re going to pay a fee, of course, to cover the cost of someone else doing the shopping and delivering.  Actually, there are a couple different fees, which makes it a bit more confusing than I wish it were.  However, it’s really pretty reasonable for what you’re getting and, depending on your current situation, it may or may not turn out to be that costly.

Here’s the breakdown:

• You pay for the actual groceries (obviously).
• You pay a delivery fee — currently $3.99 or $7.99 depending on the size of your order (but hold that thought!)
• You pay a service fee of 5% (but hold that thought!)
• You tip your shopper/driver a recommended 5%  (Not critical.  The shopper does get paid by Instacart.  But please be generous and tip.)

Now, that sounds like it would really add up.  On a very small order, it really can.  I wouldn’t recommend using the service to place a lot of really small orders, because the fees will add up.  But on a large order, it isn’t that bad, especially if it saves you shopping at a more expensive store. 

I placed a good-sized Aldi order.  At 10% in fees plus the highest $7.99 delivery fee, that still came out to under about $20.  Aldi is so much less expensive than the nearby grocery store we shop at when we can’t manage to make a run to Aldi, that we easily save that much and more.  I think on a few bottles of apple juice alone, we saved almost $5.  So you’ll have to do the math for your specific situation, but if not using the service means you’ll pay higher prices at a more upscale store or you’ll make more impulse purchases, it might pay for itself.

There’s another way to save on fees, though. 

You can buy an “express” membership.  It’s an awkward name, because it doesn’t actually get you anything faster.  But if you have this membership, currently $99/year, you get unlimited large order deliveries with no separate delivery fees and no service charges.  For smaller orders, you’ll pay a lower fee ($3.99 instead of $7.99).

So for $99 a year, you get all the “grocery-sized” deliveries you want, without paying any additional fees unless you want to pay the extra fee to get a prioritized delivery during a “busy” time (which is apparently a thing; I haven’t run into that).  “Unlimited free delivery on all orders over $35” is how Instacart describes it.  I figure that means if you get one delivery a month, you save  yourself two months’ worth of delivery & service fees.

By default, the express membership is annual, but if (like me) you’d find it a stretch to pay it all at once and still buy the next week’s groceries, you can actually change that to monthly.  It’s then $9.99/month, which is a little more, but still a pretty reasonable price for all the deliveries you want in a month.

My Experience

It took me a while to place my order the first time, because I had to find everything on the site.  I probably spent at least as much time putting together the order as I would have in the store.  But I didn’t have to go out, didn’t have to get bundled up, and didn’t have to load up any kids.  And I’ve added all my frequently-purchased items to my favorites, so next time I should be able to place an order pretty quickly.  (The time investment is pretty similar to making a master grocery list.)

There are a few things I found mildly annoying about the system that I’m hoping they’ll fix.  I wish I could have added items to my favorites from the main page where they’re listed.  The process would have gone much faster.  Instead, I had to click on each item and wait for it to load in order to add it.  (Note that you can add an item to your cart from the main page.  Just not to your favorites.)

I also wish I could have marked all of my cart items in bulk as “do not substitute.”  There were only a few items I wanted my shopper to check for substitutes for if what I wanted wasn’t in stock, but I had to set each item individually, which seems silly.  It would be a lot more efficient if they would set it to allow you to turn off substitutions on everything and then just individually edit the items you do need/want substitutions for.

And, finally, the notifications were a bit excessive.  They ask for a cell phone number so they can get in contact with you if necessary.  This is pretty important, in case the shopper has a question, you don’t hear the doorbell when they show up, etc.  (You might be laughing, but I’ve been seeing stories from Instacart shoppers saying people just weren’t there when they arrived to drop off the groceries at the designated time/place!)  However, it all seems to be interfaced with the app, and every time the shopper marks that s/he’s skipped or substituted an out-of-stock item, it sends a text.

Frankly,  I don’t care.  I don’t need or want a running commentary on the whole shopping trip.  Unless the shopper actually needs to ask me something (which is totally fine, of course), I’m perfectly happy to just find out at the end what was purchased, what was substituted, and what was simply out of stock.  So I’d like to be able to pick and choose my notifications.

All in all, though, those are pretty small quibbles, and certainly things a growing company has the potential to tweak along the way.  A few annoying text messages are a small price to pay for the convenience of a personal shopper!

If you’re intrigued, go ahead and try it out.  I got a two-week free trial to the “express” option, which I assume is pretty standard (so you shouldn’t have any delivery fees on your first order unless it’s really small or you delay for a really long time).  And all of the links in this post are my referral links; if you choose to sign up through my link, you’ll get $10 off ($35 minimum order) and I’ll get $10 credit.

[UPDATE Jan 2022: We’ve been using Instacart pretty consistently since I made this post. The fees have shifted a little, but it’s still been a reasonable deal for us, and it’s been nice not having to go to the store ourselves.  They’ve also expanded their store selection recently, so we have more options.  I know this may not be for everyone, but if you can get grocery shopping off your plate for not too large an investment, it might be worth it to be able to invest your time on things that are more important for you to do.]