Instacart Blog

Company Updates

Instacart Launches Community Carts for 10 Los Angeles-based YMCAs, Unlocking Crowdsourced Donations for Victims of the LA Wildfires 

As wildfires continue to sweep through Los Angeles County, we know that connecting temporary emergency relief centers helping care for tens of thousands of people to the much-needed groceries and supplies they need is more…

Jan 15, 2025

Company Updates

Helping the people of Los Angeles with access to fresh groceries and essentials

We are devastated by the effects of the wildfires sweeping through Los Angeles, impacting tens of thousands of people who have lost their homes, have been forced to evacuate, or are on call to evacuate…

Jan 15, 2025

Small Business Spotlight

Small Business Summer Spotlights: Cultivating Children’s Healthy Eating Habits with Temple Isaiah Preschool

​​This summer, Instacart is celebrating small businesses with our Small Business Summer Spotlights series. We know small businesses are the heart of their communities, and we’re proud to help them thrive and grow. Every Friday…

Jan 15, 2025

Company Updates

New Year, New Cart: The Tastes and Trends of 2021

A look at what home chefs will be reaching for next year Is it 2021 yet? With the holidays just around the corner comes the hope of a new year … and resolutions, inevitable diets…

Dec 18, 2024

Company Updates

Increasing Food Access: Helping Grocers Accept EBT SNAP Online in 49 States and Washington D.C., Powered by Instacart Platform

At Instacart, we’re committed to increasing access to fresh and nutritious foods. In 2020, we started accepting EBT SNAP online in partnership with our retailers using Carrot Payments – part of the Instacart Platform –…

Dec 18, 2024

Caper

How Smart Shopping Carts Can Supercharge Grocery Retail Loyalty Programs

Enhance the potential of your loyalty program Loyalty programs are powerful tools for grocers of all sizes. By offering perks like recipe recommendations, exclusive offers, and routine discounts, loyalty programs cater to consumers at the…

Dec 16, 2024

Caper

How Smart Shopping Carts Can Supercharge Grocery Retail Loyalty Programs

Enhance the potential of your loyalty program Loyalty programs are powerful tools for grocers of all sizes. By offering perks like recipe recommendations, exclusive offers, and routine discounts, loyalty programs cater to consumers at the…

Dec 16, 2024

Instacart Retail

A Retailer’s Guide to AI Grocery Retail Media Networks

Competitive advertising in connected ecosystems From personalized product recommendations to CPG promotion software, AI has become an integral tool for modern grocers of all sizes. Despite initial concerns around AI — regarding how it works…

Oct 24, 2024

Company Updates

Instacart Insights: Caper Carts Rolling into an Aisle Near You

As we roll into an enhanced era of grocery shopping, it's clear that consumers are ready to trade traditional shopping carts for something a bit more... intelligent. Smart technology isn’t just assisting us in everyday…

Oct 7, 2024

Company Updates

Holiday Ordering Simplified: FoodStorm’s New Capabilities Enhance Prepared Food Retail Operations

Improved in-store fulfillment functionality and stock management will help boost retail sales  As the holiday season approaches, grocers are gearing up for the annual surge in prepared food and catering orders. To prepare for the…

Sep 18, 2024

FoodStorm

Ten Ways to Drive Profitability with Perimeter Departments

How Are You Growing Your Grocery Margins? It’s no secret: Bigger profit margins support better business growth. For grocers, though, increasing margins can feel like an uphill battle. Historically, grocery has produced lower profit margins…

Sep 17, 2024

FoodStorm

Elevate Your In-Store Prepared Foods Experience with Grocery Kiosk Technology

Bringing Digitization to Perimeter Departments Between online shopping solutions like digital storefronts and in-store touchpoints like electronic shelf labels, we’re seeing the next evolution of grocery technology happen in real time.  Retailers are leveraging the…

Sep 17, 2024

Company Updates

Shoppable Recipes Inspired by Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV+

A show about scientific yet easy recipes and Instacart? It doesn’t take a PhD to see how the two would perfectly fit together. Timed to the October 13 global premiere of Lessons in Chemistry on…

Oct 24, 2023

Company Updates

Bringing Inspirational, AI-Powered Search to the Instacart app with Ask Instacart

At Instacart, AI has been central to everything we do for years: from matching Shoppers to available batches and delivery windows to helping customers find the right replacements for low-stock items and serving up personalized…

Oct 24, 2023

Company Updates

New Omnichannel and AI Solutions to Help Grocery Thrive

At Instacart, we’ve long believed that the future of grocery – and commerce in general – isn’t online or in-store. It’s both. And now more than ever, it’s being supercharged with AI.  Omnichannel customers are…

Oct 20, 2023

Eversight

Instacart and Klarna Partner to Offer Consumers More Flexible Ways to Pay

We’re teaming up with Klarna to introduce even more ways to pay for your purchases online on Instacart.com and in the Instacart app. Our partnership gives you more flexibility to pay for same-day delivery across…

Nov 20, 2023

Company Updates

Instacart 2022: A Feast of Grocery Innovations and Upgrades 

Imagine that you’re grocery shopping. Now imagine being able to shop 24/7, selecting from one billion items, and being able to access inventory that updates 3,000 times per second– and checking out alongside millions of…

Oct 20, 2023

Company Updates

The Power of Promotions: How AI Can Help Retailers Combat Inflation

Inflation is driving up the cost of food throughout North America, resulting in higher prices for individual items and full baskets, both online and in-store. An Advantage Sales survey found that nine out of ten…

Oct 20, 2023

Company Updates

Introducing Connected Stores: Making Shopping Seamless

For the last decade, we’ve worked with grocers to bring their businesses online, and helped people find their favorite foods and get them delivered to their door in just a few clicks. While there’s a…

Oct 24, 2023

Instacart Retail

4 Online Grocery Technology Methods to Future-Proof Your Operations

Fast, scalable grocery fulfillment has become the norm, exponentially accelerated over the past few years by the COVID-19 pandemic and consumers’ increasing need for convenience. Whether in-store shopping or grocery ordering, seamless experiences are the…

Oct 20, 2023

Instacart Retail

The Complete Guide to Driving Growth with Grocery E-Commerce

In the next five years, some grocery executives believe that e-commerce penetration will increase to as high as 35%. While grocery e-commerce and fulfillment leaders have spent years integrating technology to offer essentials to the…

Oct 20, 2023

Instacart Ads

Doritos Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Recipe a Huge Hit on Instacart

With Instacart Ads, we can help consumers find new products and brands they’ll love while shopping online from their favorite retailers. By connecting CPG brands with consumers at the point of purchase, we can help…

Jan 16, 2025

Instacart Ads

Torani Tastes 67% Incremental Sales Lift with Instacart Ads

Established in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in 1925, Torani put Italian sodas on the U.S. map in the 1920s and created the world's first flavored latte in the 1980s. From the beginning, they’ve used…

Jan 14, 2025

Instacart Ads

Instacart Celebrates the Fastest Growing Emerging Brands List 

We believe in the power of choice. Consumers want choice when it comes to where they shop for groceries and how they shop — online, in-store, or an omnichannel mix. Retailers want choice when it…

Jan 7, 2025

Instacart Health

Making Expert Nutrition Advice Accessible and Actionable with Instacart Health

It should be easy to understand how nutritious a food is, but we’ve all been there – studying the fine print on a package, trying to figure out how it fits into our health needs…

Jan 10, 2025

Company Updates

Increasing Food Access: Helping Grocers Accept EBT SNAP Online in 49 States and Washington D.C., Powered by Instacart Platform

At Instacart, we’re committed to increasing access to fresh and nutritious foods. In 2020, we started accepting EBT SNAP online in partnership with our retailers using Carrot Payments – part of the Instacart Platform –…

Dec 18, 2024

Company Updates

Tackling Nutrition Insecurity, Together

At Instacart, we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. To make this a reality, we’re working every day to bridge the food access gap…

Dec 18, 2024

Small Business Spotlight

Small Business Summer Spotlights: Cultivating Children’s Healthy Eating Habits with Temple Isaiah Preschool

​​This summer, Instacart is celebrating small businesses with our Small Business Summer Spotlights series. We know small businesses are the heart of their communities, and we’re proud to help them thrive and grow. Every Friday…

Jan 15, 2025

Company Updates

Instacart Announces Free Delivery and 2% Back for All Small Businesses Across North America That Join Instacart During Limited Time Offer

Offer Gives Offices, Restaurants and More New Ways to Save and Serve Their Customers with Free Instacart+    We know the demands on small businesses – especially offices and restaurants – have never been more…

Jan 15, 2025

Ideas & Guides

Instacart Business Partner Spotlight: Industrious shares how to make the perfect office charcuterie spread

If there’s one thing Industrious knows, it’s charcuterie. And as part of our new Instacart Business partnership with the famed flexible workspace provider, Industrious is offering expanded and elevated food and beverage experiences to the…

Jan 15, 2025

Shopper Community

NYC Shoppers Resist New NYC Bill, According to Survey

Shoppers tell us time and again how important it is that they can continue to earn flexibly on our platform - meaning they get to choose when, where and how much they want to shop…

Jan 6, 2025

Shopper Community

Fast-Tracked Folly: NYC’s Misguided Grocery Delivery Ordinance Hurts New Yorkers

New York City is rushing an ordinance that threatens the wallets of hardworking New Yorkers by reducing earnings opportunities for many residents and making grocery delivery more expensive. The ordinance recklessly applies a deeply flawed…

Dec 5, 2024

Shopper Community

Celebrating Shoppers during Shopper Appreciation Week

Instacart wouldn’t be what it is without our dedicated community of shoppers. To show our gratitude for all they do for their communities during the holiday season–and all seasons–Instacart hosted a special Shopper Appreciation Week…

Dec 3, 2024

Data & Trends

Spice It Up: Instacart Dishes Out Spicy Insights for National Hot Sauce Day

As we kick off 2025, Instacart is spicing things up with data-driven insights for National Hot Sauce Day on January 22. Whether you're adding a dash of hot sauce to your morning eggs or giving…

Jan 14, 2025

Company Updates

How Deep is Your Love? Instacart Ranks Top Cities for Romance

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and here at Instacart, we believe that food is the quickest way to the heart. Whether you swoon over chocolate-covered strawberries, pucker up for heart-shaped candies, or are…

Dec 18, 2024

Company Updates

Turning up the Heat for National Hot Sauce Day

In honor of National Hot Sauce Day on January 22, we asked our employees if they could stand the heat by hosting spicy-themed breakfasts to taste the most popular hot sauce brands purchased via Instacart…

Dec 18, 2024

Taste of Instacart

Meet Priya Monga, GM of Instacart Business

Instacart’s Priya Monga is no stranger to breaking new ground. Throughout her career, she’s found herself at the starting point of many new ventures. Now, as she leads the newly launched Instacart Business, she’s setting…

Jan 15, 2025

Taste of Instacart

¡Cinco Años de Sazón! Five Years of Honoring Latinx & Hispanic Cultures at Instacart

From September 15 through October 15, we celebrated Latinx & Hispanic Heritage Month at Instacart. Championed by Sazón, our Employee Resource Group (ERG) dedicated to the Latinx community, this year’s activities were anchored under the…

Nov 1, 2024

Taste of Instacart

Building Bridges this Pride Month with Rainbow Carrots

Happy Pride Month! This month, our Rainbow Carrots Employee Resource Group (ERG) proudly led this year's festivities, featuring both virtual and in-person events designed to celebrate Instacart’s diverse identities and make room for positive change…

Jun 28, 2024

How It's Made

Building for Balance

How we developed a unified marketplace balancing engine with machine learning and optimization. Written by Trace Levinson, Senior Machine Learning Engineer. The Instacart Marketplace team is deeply focused on producing both timely, high-quality deliveries for…

Apr 12, 2024

How It's Made

One Model to Serve Them All: How Instacart deployed a single Deep Learning pCTR model for multiple surfaces with improved operations and performance along the way

Authors: Cheng Jia, Peng Qi, Joseph Haraldson, Adway Dhillon, Qiao Jiang, Sharath Rao Introduction Instacart Ads and Ranking Models At Instacart Ads, our focus lies in delivering the utmost relevance in advertisements to our customers, facilitating novel product discovery and enhancing…

Dec 19, 2023

How It's Made

Monte Carlo, Puppetry and Laughter: The Unexpected Joys of Prompt Engineering

Author: Ben Bader The universe of the current Large Language Models (LLMs) engineering is electrifying, to say the least. The industry has been on fire with change since the launch of ChatGPT in November of…

Dec 19, 2023

Small Business Spotlight

Small Business Summer Spotlights: Cultivating Children’s Healthy Eating Habits with Temple Isaiah Preschool

​​This summer, Instacart is celebrating small businesses with our Small Business Summer Spotlights series. We know small businesses are the heart of their communities, and we’re proud to help them thrive and grow. Every Friday…

Jan 15, 2025

Small Business Spotlight

Small Business Summer Spotlights: Serving Up Love & Empowering Young Careers with Connie’s Chicken & Waffles

​​This summer, Instacart is celebrating small businesses with our Small Business Summer Spotlights series. We know small businesses are the heart of their communities, and we’re proud to help them thrive and grow. Every Friday…

Jan 15, 2025

Small Business Spotlight

Small Business Summer Spotlights: Creating Strong Community & Empowering Employees with Yoke’s Fresh Market

This summer, Instacart is celebrating small businesses with our Small Business Summer Spotlights series. We know small businesses are the heart of their communities, and we’re proud to help them thrive and grow. On Fridays…

Jul 21, 2023