Instacart Announces New Appointment, Upgraded Grocery Pickup Experience

Instacart, a North American leader in online grocery, announced this week a new Instacart Pickup product and the appointment of Instacart veteran Sarah Mastrorocco to the newly-created role of General Manager, Instacart Pickup. The announcement comes following a year of significant pickup growth for Instacart, which tripled the number of states and doubled the number of grocery partners offering its grocery pickup product in 2019, including Food Lion, Gelson’s, Publix, Price Chopper, Schnucks, Shop ‘n Save, The Fresh Market, Wegmans and more, across more than 30 states. The company expects to expand the Instacart Pickup offering to all 50 states by the end of 2020.

The reimagined Instacart Pickup product has been rolling out to consumers gradually during the past several months and is now available to all Instacart customers across the US and Canada. Among the new features, Instacart Pickup now includes:

• Smart Storefronts – Customers can now view delivery and pickup options from a single digital storefront for each of their favorite grocers on the Instacart platform. The new Smart Storefront feature allows customers to easily toggle between delivery and pickup options to view the most up-to-date inventory by store and compare time windows for both.
• “Pick Your Pickup” Mapping – Coming from home, work, soccer practice and everywhere in between, customers can now easily view and select the pickup location most convenient to their route that day.
• “On The Way” Alerts for Faster Pickup – Customers can now enable location-based notifications to let the store know when they’re on the way and getting close. Handoff is more seamless with this new feature, which allows in-store shoppers to be ready and waiting for customers curbside in real-time.
• Customized Navigation – Instacart Pickup’s new navigation feature sends customers to the mapping app of their choice, automatically directing drivers from their current location to the store.
• Send a Friend or Family Member – Customers can now share their order details with friends and family to delegate pickup to another driver. Place the order and send a friend to pick it up.
• Alcohol Pickup – Instacart continues to extend the aisles of its pickup product, and is now also offering alcohol pickup across more than 20 retail partners, including Aldi, BevMo!, Publix, Save Mart, Sprouts and Wegmans, among others.
• In addition to the new consumer experience and in preparation for Instacart’s expected pickup growth in 2020, the company has appointed Sarah Mastrorocco to the newly-created role of General Manager, Instacart Pickup. A longtime Instacart veteran and leader, Sarah will work closely with partners across the organization to oversee and scale Instacart’s fast-growing pickup operation. Sarah joined Instacart nearly six years ago as the first member of the company’s Business Development team and since then has played an integral role in various leadership positions across Catalog, Account Management and, most recently, as VP of Business Development. Before Instacart, Sarah was a member of PepsiCo’s Global Operations Group, working on direct store delivery operations across North and South America. Prior to that, she was on Frito-Lay North America’s Strategy and M&A team.

“2020 is the year of pickup. For our retail partners, we’ve seen Instacart Pickup become a gateway to growth in a margin-thin industry. Our pickup product is also becoming a significant revenue contributor for our retail partners, growing customer basket size by an average of 15 percent and accounting for an average of 20 percent of a retailer’s total Instacart store sales,” said Nilam Ganenthiran, President of Instacart. “Instacart’s broader business continues to grow at an incredible clip with pickup as our fastest-growing product. With the completed rollout of the new Instacart Pickup and the appointment of Sarah as our new GM, we’re laying the groundwork now to prepare for another year of triple-digit growth. By year-end, we expect to have the largest pickup retail footprint in North America and, in the coming years, to grow Instacart Pickup into a multi-billion dollar business.”

Instacart is the North American leader in grocery delivery and today partners with more than 350 beloved national, regional and local retailers to offer delivery from nearly 25,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in the US and Canada. Instacart delivery is currently available to more than 85 percent of households in the US and more than 70 percent of households in Canada.