Instacart to launch OKC service June 22
Another company that delivers online ordered groceries to your door will begin operating in the Oklahoma City area this month, and it’s teaming up with a local grocer, it’s announced.
Instacart said it is launching its same-day delivery service on June 22 for Homeland customers.
It announced it also will be delivering to Oklahoma City area customers who shop at Petco, and for customers who shop at two other food stores in the area that operate nationally.
The relationships between Instacart and the two other food retailers couldn’t be confirmed Thursday.
Instacart officials said they will provide delivery service initially to more than 300,000 area households, and that the company plans to hire more than 100 shoppers to provide the service.
Nilam Ganenthiran, Instacart’s chief business officer, said Thursday that the delivery service’s agreement with Homeland and numerous hits on Instacart’s website from Oklahoma City area consumers are among the reasons why the company is moving into the market now.
But he said agreements Instacart executes with its partnering stores are critical, as those set the framework to allow Instacart to use its software to feature its partners’ products and to provide delivery services to their customers.
Brian Haaraoja, Homeland’s vice president of merchandising and marketing, confirmed Thursday the Oklahoma Citybased company has contracted with Instacart for its grocery delivery service, adding that the company is excited about the deal.
Haaraoja said the delivery service is something Homeland needs to compete, and that he and other executives hope it will give the operation a chance to grow its sales by tapping into new areas of customers it hasn’t been able to reach, including downtown.
“We really need to be there, so we are really excited to be Instacart’s partner,” he said.
Ganenthiran said retailers are much more willing to enter into agreements with Instacart now than they were five years ago, when the delivery service was created.
Then, grocers weren’t convinced their customers wanted same-day delivery of groceries ordered online, but attitudes since have changed, he said, adding that there’s not a grocer in the country where e-commerce isn’t a strategic priority.
“It is not like ordering CDs or electronics,” Ganenthiran said. “When you need food, you need it right away.”
Instacart’s mission, Ganenthiran said, is to connect customers to the groceries they need, and to do it in as little as an hour’s time.
Retail is the hero
Ganenthiran said Instacart works with retailers to help them grow.
“In this increasingly Amazon.com world, we want to enable brickand-mortar retailers like Homeland to be able to compete,” he said, adding that customers want their groceries from retailers they trust.
He said Instacart is the nation’s largest grocery e-commerce player, and that it has agreements with 160 retailers that operate thousands of stores.
On Instacart.com or the Instacart app, a customer inputs a ZIP code to determine whether the delivery service is available and, if so, what stores the company delivers.
The user selects the store he or she wants to shop, selects what to buy and pays for the purchase, putting in a delivery location and a preferred time.
The order is filled and delivered by an Instacart shopper.
Ganenthiran said Instacart’s software makes it possible to bring a store and its products online within a month after a contract has been signed.
But it takes Instacart a lot of time to get to contract execution, he said, because retailers want to be sure the service will provide their customers a quality experience.
“From a relationship perspective, it can take from months to years to develop a partnership,” he said. “We think Oklahoma City is going to be a great market for us, and we are there to make our retail partners there successful and their customers happy.”
Andrew Kovacs, the communications director for Sequoia Capital, an Instacart investor, said he expects that Homeland, its customers and Instacart all will enjoy a beneficial relationship.
“For the shoppers themselves, those are well-paying jobs. And then, it also benefits retailers who really are struggling to compete against Amazon.”
As part of Instacart’s announcement, it said it is offering new customers $25 off their first order of $35 or more through Oct. 21 if they use HIOKC 25 as a promo code.
It also said it will offer any customers who join before July 15 a free, oneyear trial of Instacart Express membership, which waives normal $6 delivery fees on orders over $35. After that, the membership will cost $99 per year, or $15 per month.