Nutrition Facts: Holy Guacamole, it’s National Avocado Day

Just like the information on the back of a cereal box, Nutrition Facts is a deeper look at the ingredients behind the Instacart experience. This ongoing series will provide a behind-the-scenes look at what makes Instacart work — the technology, services, features, and more that are helping improve the shopper experience.

At Instacart, we have a pretty common getting-to-know-you question we like to ask: “What item is always in your cart?” It shouldn’t be surprising that one of the most common answers we get is — you guessed it — avocados.

Today is National Avocado Day, which means we’re doing a deep dive on all things green and guacamole-focused. Chances are if you’re an Instacart shopper, you’ve seen avocados on your shopping list at least once. Our data shows that shoppers select about 43,000 avocados per day — that’s more than one avocado per shopper every three days. That all adds up to more than 22 million avocados ordered via Instacart (can you say holy guacamole?).

In addition to the sheer quantity of avocados ordered through Instacart, they’re also one of the most common items that customers include a comment about. In fact, more than a million customer comments have been left on Instacart just for avocados.

As shoppers, you know that a customer comment can be extremely helpful when deciding whether to pick an avocado that’s ready for dinner tonight, or one that has a few more days to ripen. Here are a few more insights into the most common — and amusing — avocado comments left by customers.

Timing: Customers frequently mention a date or time they plan to eat avocados, to help shoppers identify how ripe they prefer the avocado to be.

• 89% of customers who mention a time they plan to eat their avocados ask for them to be ready “today,” “tonight,” or “tomorrow.”
• Sunday is the most popular day for people to order avocados.
• Tuesday is the most-referenced day of the week that customers note they plan to eat their avocados. #TacoTuesday, anyone?

Ripeness: Some customers have specific preferences about softness, color, and other ripeness-indicating factors. Here are some of the most amusing customer comments on avocado ripeness (ripped-ness?):

• “Please pick avocados that are not too green and hard and not too soft and dark — in between — as if you planned to eat the avacado in 2–3 days not right away.”
• “Pls pick avocados that are ripped or close to being ripped if you can. If they are all green, that’s ok. Still want them. Thanks!”
• “ripe af plz thx”

Sage advice: In case you’re looking for a secret tip on how to pick the perfect avocado, these customers offer their own guidance for finding the best one:

• “Optional Avocado-Ninja-Super-Secret-Protip: the oblong ones have smaller pits! (Round ones are like, alllllll pit). Hope it helps o/”
• “For ripeness, pull out the stem on top, if it’s green and they’re somewhat soft they’re good (not too mushy) if under the stem is brown, they’re bad”
• “Touch end of your nose — that is how an avocado should feel when ready to eat :)”

For more on the funniest customer requests and other Instacart avocado data, check out the full Ripe Report.

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Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.