Oink

Grow your own vegetables. That's what I do.

Siouxie

Where do you grow sufficient vegetables to live on when you live in a tiny apartment on a busy street?

BristolUK

I can quite understand that. While I was lining up this week's order I noticed Rib Eye was $26 lb and their chicken legs 'offer' price is three times that of Superstore's offer price.

But generally most of their flyer prices compare favourably to everyone else's.

I find their flyer on Smart Canucks and make a note of some of the deals. Then check the website to see if those prices are available on an online order. They usually are, whereas with Instacart they usually aren't. Although IGA charges more for order assembly/delivery than Instacart does, it can work out cheaper overall.

BristolUK

Hadn't yet decided where the second half of this week's grocery order was to come from but recently some of Walmart's flyer prices have been available via Instacart, which is unusual.
The flyer had bog paper - equal to 80 - for $15.97, down from $23.97 which is a very good offer. It was actually $14.97 on instacart.

A few other good deals were also available (hopefully the new normal) so I made quite a big order. It arrived an hour after ordering.

spouse of scouse

I love reading this thread, it's a wonderful snapshot of everyday life/shopping/prices where the people who post live. Thanks all!

scrubbedexpat091

I still haven't figured out how Instacart makes its money..ha ha

spouse of scouse

Do shoppers pay an additional amount to Instacart for the service? Or perhaps the grocery store itself pays the company a commission for each shop? I haven't got a clue really, just stabbing in the dark

spouse of scouse

Ask and you shall receive!

Instacart primarily makes money through a delivery fee, which comes to $5.99 on orders over $35 and $7.99 on orders under $35. The minimum order amount you can make through the service is $10. Delivery fees may also increase if you want the order delivered quicker or during busier times: for example, my test order totaling under $35 would've cost $9.99 to fulfill on a Thursday evening, meaning Instacart was adding $2 to the delivery fee.

Additionally, more frequent Instacart users may be enticed to sign up for Instacart Express, which offers free two-hour or scheduled deliveries on orders over $35. For one-hour deliveries, Instacart Express members pay the standard fee. Today, it costs $149 for a year subscription to Instacart Express.

In addition to its consumer-facing fees and subscriptions, Instacart also makes money through two other avenues.

For one, the company has revenue sharing models in place with all retailers on its platform. Though the scope of those models vary from vendor to vendor, Instacart doesn't share exactly how these models work.
The other avenue is promotions-based. Instacart works with brands of consumer packaged goods (CPGs) to offer customers special discounts in the Instacart Deals section of its online marketplace. It's kind of like having an ad platform, except you have real people actually in the moment of purchase, which means that CPGs can work with Instacart to pay for better visibility.


https://vator.tv/news/2016-08-02-how...tandard%20fee.

BristolUK

Probably all those smaller things that they charge $4.99 for when in store it's $2.99

scrubbedexpat091

They do charge a small fee to the customer, but when they are paying us (when we were doing it as drivers) $20-$30 (excluding customer tips) to shop and deliver and the customer is paying like $3.99 or something there is still a large gap.

But they gone back to giving batches based on # of reviews, we only had 8 reviews since we had just started, but now that they went back to their prioritized method, there are no batches at all today, but each day there were fewer and fewer, was a good way to make some cash while it lasted, got us some food those weeks.

The app in general seems to have lost popularity now that things are mostly back to normal and going grocery shopping themselves again.

Usually by now there would have been some batches under the COVID policy and today was the first day going back to their old way, and no batches available at all yet, so ha ha was good while it lasted.

I also imagine as Bristol said they likely mark up some items, surely the store pays something, and I wouldn't be surprised if companies pay a fee to have their products more prominently displayed or recommended.

BristolUK

These figures do vary a bit place to place. Express membership is $10 monthly here or $100 annually. I'm rounding.

It's almost hidden but there is also a % fee according to your spend. It's 5% on top of the fee per shop. But if you take the Express membership option, it's only 2% and you don't pay that fixed fee.

So membership will save you 3% of your spend. It's not hard to see that if you spend $400, instead of service fees of $20 you only pay $8. So that saving of $12 is already less than the $10 membership before you consider the fact that now you don't pay the fixed fee as well. Use it regularly and Express is by far the most economical way to do it**. And it means you can give the poor sod shopping for you a bigger tip.

**It's just a shame about the higher prices than one would pay in person.

BristolUK

On one of my first instacart shops I had about half a dozen things listed asking the shopper to only get them if they were the flyer prices. Stuff like Pepsi for 99c a bottle and coffee pods @ $9 for a box of 30 but her app insisted $2 for the pepsi and $15 for the coffee.

Since I would normally buy at least 12 bottles and a couple of boxes of coffee, that's a hell of a mark up if I went for the usual amount.

Oink

I have a community garden plot which is like an allotment but with no shed, cider or TMS. So apart from the produce a bit rubbish.

BEVS

Good one Oink. We have that here and some of MrBEVS rellies in inner city Wolvo have a shared allotment.

caretaker

Whoever is handling the produce at Giant Tiger has been bunching 4 avocados per bag and pricing it at $1.50 because they think they are too old, but they're perfect, maybe for the next 3 or 4 days. I had to throw a couple out last time because I wasn't fast enough, but I can only eat so much avocado. I had guacamole the last 2 days, and now I have another 4 avocados. They're good in a ham or chicken sandwich with tomato and onion (Mexican food carts are great!) so I'll maybe get some buns and some more ham, but what are some other things to make with them?