Nutrition Facts: Inventory Data to the Moon and Back

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.

The Instacart experience might seem simple — a customer places an order, and a shopper picks, packs, and delivers that order. But behind the scenes, a lot more goes into making that order happen than many customers, or even shoppers, may realize.

Aside from the effort that shoppers put into fulfilling each and every order, there’s complex technology at work making sure that the items customers select online are the same ones shoppers will see when they enter the grocery store.

Instacart has the largest online grocery catalog in the world. We process half a billion item listings from 300 different retailers across 20,000 stores in North America. On any given night, the Instacart platform is processing upwards of half a billion lines of data — in miles, that could take you all the way to the moon and back.

Here’s a practical example: a grocery store may have as many as 350 different kinds of milk in its inventory. If a certain type of milk is unavailable, there’s a big difference between making a quality replacement and replacing it with any other type or brand of milk. For instance, if a customer orders a gallon of 2% milk, it wouldn’t be logical to replace it with a quart of almond milk. It has to be similar in category (dairy, almond, oat), type (organic, skim, 1%, 2%), price point, brand, and size (half gallon, whole gallon, etc). Using inventory and other forms of data, our replacement engine is able to pull in a high-quality, preferred replacement for customers that matches all of these attributes.

Processing all of that data is an immense undertaking from an engineering perspective, and it requires a lot of information to show the household essentials shoppers and customers see in their apps. Typically, retail partners share new data with us every night, which we then feed into the app to make sure we have the most up-to-date inventory possible.

But as you know, a lot can change in a day. A grocery store’s inventory and prices don’t just change day by day; they change minute by minute. As shoppers, you’re the ones who are on the ground in stores, carefully choosing a customer’s requested organic apple or a specific brand of yogurt. As such, you play a vital role as we work to ensure the items listed on our app directly match the items available in the store.

Every time you mark an item as “out of stock,” that data is sent back into the Instacart platform and used to make it smarter. By making these updates, you’re helping alert us and the customers to what’s available, allowing us to fine-tune the information on the app and deliver accurate product listings.

Keeping all of these stores’ inventory as up to date as possible is a tall order, but when the correct information is available, it benefits everyone — not just customers, but shoppers as well. When availability information is accurate, customers will only select items that are in stock, making it much easier for shoppers to find items and complete orders quickly. The real-time, on-the-ground feedback we get from shoppers is a crucial part of the journey toward delivering the best possible experience for customers and shoppers alike.

And, as we continue to listen to shopper feedback, we’re looking at even more enhancements we can use to make the catalog faster, better, and smarter. We look forward to continuing to innovate to help shoppers, customers, and retailers have a perfect order journey, from soup to nuts.

Instacart

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.