Dive Brief:
- Whole Foods is expanding its relationship with Instacart, a grocery delivery service, which will offer faster delivery and in-store pickup options.
- Under the new deal, Instacart will embed shoppers in Whole Foods stores in the 15 cities it currently serves and offer home delivery within one hour. The existing service required Instacart to dispatch a shopper when an order was received.
- In addition, the two companies will pilot an in-store pickup service in Boston and Austin, before expanding that offering to other markets.
Dive Insight:
At this rate we may never actually have to walk the aisles of Whole Foods again. And there are advantages to that, as anyone who has ever waited in a seemingly endless line at any grocery retailer can tell you.
But the best thing about Instacart isn't what it does for consumers, it's what it does for its contractors. There's something about the geek-turned-delivery-guy model that seems to attract a large number of hardworking techies.