Instacart expands to Lodi area
Lodians can now order their groceries online and have them delivered straight to their front door. Instacart, the fast-growing retail delivery service whose shoppers hand pick and deliver items from local stores, has made its ways to the area.
“We are headquartered in the Bay Area right in San Francisco, and I think we have this goal to really bring Instacart to as many households as possible,” Instacart representative Nata Kovalova said on Monday. “I think Stockton and Lodi were a really good fit for our next wave of expansion.”
Instacart began offering service in the Lodi area on Sept. 28, and now residents can order from their favorite retailers such as Smart & Final, Costco, CVS, Petco, and Safeway, and have their groceries and everyday essentials delivered straight to their doorsteps in as little as one hour.
“We are very much on demand when you want, whenever you want,” Kovalova said. “Another great feature of Instacart is that we partner with a lot of local grocery stores, so it’s the same grocery store that you would be used to shopping in yourself so you can feel familiar with the products you’re getting. They’re coming from all of your favorite local stores.” Customers go online to
www.instacart.com or open the Instacart mobile app on their iPhone or Android device, select their city/store, add items to a virtual cart, then choose a delivery window (within one hour, within two hours, or up to seven days in advance) and check out.
“So you would enter your zip code into the shopper app or online at www.instacart.
com and then it would show you all of the stores that you would have available to deliver from and then once you go in there you’ll see the full catalog of items you can order. You essentially add those to your virtual shopping cart before check out,” Kovalova said.
An Instacart shopper accepts the order on a smartphone, uses the Instacart shopper app to guide them through shopping, and then delivers the order to the customer in the designated delivery timeframe.
For orders of $35 or more, the delivery fee is $5.99. Customers can also sign up for an Instacart Express membership, which allows for free one-hour delivery on orders
of $35 or more. After a free trial period, Instacart Express membership is $14.99 a month or $149 a year.
According to Kovalova, so far there has been a lot of enthusiasm in response to its expansion into the Stockton and Lodi areas.
“I was there a couple of weeks ago for the launch itself, and we just had an overwhelming number of full service workers show up to work with Instacart, and I think they were certainly excited,” she said.
Instacart is for anyone from the elderly and disabled who can’t get out to those working and too busy to shop, colleges students who may want a few last-minute items for a party and businesses who want to stock their kitchens, Kovalova said. The app is also simple and user friendly, she said.
Instacart allows customers are to access their order history to see their previous orders to make ordering easy the next time around. Nutritional information is provided for every product, and the service also recommends items based on the customer’s selections.
Instacart also has coupons available to help customers.
The expansion is expected to bring at least 100 shopping jobs to the community. Instacart shoppers are all independent contractors and can sign up for Instacart by entering all their information online at www.shoppers.instacart.com. The process to sign up is all done online.