Whole Foods Market and Instacart part ways

Since Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods Market in 2017, the industry has expected the Whole Foods Market-Instacart partnership to come to an end, with Amazon’s own services to deliver groceries to their customers’ homes instead. On Dec. 13, 2018, Instacart founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta announced that the company was ‘winding down’ its business with Whole Foods Market.

Instacart currently has 1,415 in-store shoppers across 76 Whole Foods locations. “Out of this community of in-store shoppers at Whole Foods, 243 will be impacted beginning February 10, 2019. In the months that follow, we expect to ramp down all remaining Whole Foods in-store shopping operations in preparation for Whole Foods to fully exit our marketplace in the coming months,” Mehta said in a statement.  

Instacart will shift 75 percent of its Whole Foods Market shoppers to other nearby retailers and offer them a bonus. Shoppers who cannot or do not want to be placed at other retailers will receive a three-month separation package based on their maximum monthly pay in 2018.

The Whole Foods Market separation is reported to reduce Instacart’s revenue by less than 5 percent.