Instacart updates grocery delivery charges
On-demand grocery delivery company Instacart has announced that it is updating its charges. In a notice posted on its official blog on 29 December, Instacart said that “for most cities, delivery now starts at $5.99”, and the cost for the Instacart Express subscription service will be $149 a year beginning 4 January.
The $5.99 one-off charge is for delivery within two hours or delivery scheduled for later. Additional fees may apply to one hour deliveries or deliveries with under $35 of items and “Busy Pricing fees” may apply during times of high demand.
Instacart Express is a yearly membership which gives members unlimited free two hour and scheduled deliveries over $35.
The company commented: “While our starting delivery price has not changed in the past three and a half years, a lot about Instacart has changed. We’ve partnered with over 100 retailers, we’ve opened operations in more than 18 cities around the country and we’ve welcomed thousands of Personal Shoppers to our community.
“To account for these improvements to our service, as well as changing market conditions, we’ve updated our prices.”
Instacart has been growing rapidly, but a report published by Re/code suggests that it may now be taking stock and slowing the pace. According to re/code, “multiple sources” have reported that the company laid off 12 in-house recruiters earlier this month.
The Re/code article then quoted a statement from Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta as saying: “We’re continuing to hire for key roles in areas like engineering, data science and sales, but as we no longer need to maintain such an aggressive hiring pace, we’ve decided to reduce the size of our recruiting team to better align with our future goals.”
