Honoring Juneteenth at Instacart

Since 2021, Instacart has commemorated Juneteenth — it’s a significant date for us to reflect on, and this year was no different. As a company, we have been recognizing Juneteenth throughout the entire month of June with programming and initiatives highlighting the importance of the day. 

This year, more of our team members got involved in our Juneteenth programming than ever before. Here’s a look at just some of the events that have taken place, with even more to come: 

We uplifted Black businesses: 

• We facilitated an emerging brands discussion featuring Black-owned brands Blk & Bold, Go Oats and Capital City, from our Ads Initiative with our VP of Ads, Tim Castelli. During this conversation, we unpacked the journeys of these brands, how they leveraged Instacart’s Ads Initiative, and what success and support looks like for their business models. We also featured the products as part of our Snack Spotlight program where employees across our offices had the opportunity to try a snack, beverage, or condiment on our Instacart platform.  
• We coordinated a fireside chat with Taydra Mitchell Jackson, CMO for SheaMoisture, a Unilever company, and our VP of Brand Partnerships, Josh Rider. Over 200 employees across Instacart and Unilever joined the chat where we discussed our shared commitments to the communities we serve, as well as the role companies play in uplifting Black CPG brands.

We promoted inclusion and belonging: 

• Our Chief Financial Officer, Nick Giovanni, hosted a racial equity conversation with National Book Award-winning author and one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. Nick was previously familiar with Dr. Kendi’s work, and was eager to lead the conversation — the result was an engaging and authentic hour on ways to support inclusion and belonging, and even more sensitive topics like capitalism. The talk was anchored to Dr. Kendi’s principles of an antiracist as outlined in his book How to be an Antiracist, which employees had a chance to read prior to the chat. 
• As a standing tradition during Pride Month, our Rainbow Carrots, Instacart’s LGBTQ2IA+ Employee Resource Group, traditionally hosts an initiative celebrating the colors of the Pride rainbow flag. In honor of Juneteenth, this year Rainbow Carrots decided to organize a “Black Out Friday” initiative to commemorate the holiday and support the broader community.

We served our communities:  

• As part of our commitment to improving food access, from June 21st to 28th, we hosted company-wide Days of Action where over 300 employees came together to volunteer with food banks in Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington D.C., San Diego and Toronto. As of today, our teams have sorted and distributed 92,000 lbs of food, supporting more than 6,500 families in North America.

To close out the month, on June 29th our Nightshades Employee Resource Group is hosting a fireside chat event with Carlynn Greene, a financial aid coach and founder of Scholarship Guru. 

Juneteenth is not just about Black history, it’s American history. It’s a day of not only remembrance but of healing and hope for the future. As we acknowledge the day, it’s important we know there’s still much work to be done.

Learn more about Instacart and our communities here. 

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.