kodokan

Excellent, will do!

How is your delivering going? Have you received the promised supplies of sanitizers and wipes so you can safely keep the burgers coming to hungry teens?

sid nv

I did receive 3 x sample-size bottles of hand sanitizer from the food delivery company, paid $5 shipping. These are useful for sanitizing in the car in between deliveries, or doing my own shopping.

But I stopped food delivery a week ago. My wife and I (we work as a team) are both aged over 65, so I consider it a bit risky. It's not like the customers depend on our service, they are clearly capable and have the facilities to cook their own food. It is hard to not go out and deliver as it gets us out of the house, but whenever I get tempted to accept an offer I go read a front-line account from an intensive care ward worker, and decide boredom and cabin fever is preferable to C-19.

I have 5 separate jobs, all of which have come to a halt. But there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, and I hope June will be the month we start to come out of this.

ddsrph

I just learned that our neighborhood has Instacart service. We are 15 miles from town. I have signed up with Kroger as the store. How does it work? Order and bill with credit card then give delivery person cash tip? Is the delivery charge shown on bill prior to paying and that amount is split between shopper/delivery person and Instacart? Is the shopper also the person who delivers?

kodokan

Yes, it’s the same person throughout. Instacart will offer your order out to their nearby gig workers about 1-2 hours before your delivery time slot. The potential shoppers will be able to see the Instacart base pay offer (usually $7-$10 depending on size of order, heavy items, and distance) plus whatever tip you’ve chosen to add when placing the order. They can see roughly where your house is but not the actual address, and what the items are in the order. Once one of them accepts the offer, you’ll see an update on your screen that ‘<Name, and their profile picture> is your shopper!’ and be told that they’re driving to the store.

Upon arriving at the store, the shopper will swipe to start shopping. You can follow along in real time seeing which items they’ve found so far, and you’ll receive an automated message about any substitutions or refunds they have to make, and be able to accept or reject them - obviously there are a lot more out of stocks than usual right now!

Your shopper may message you personally with options - the better ones do, some don’t, but the app will notify you throughout anyway. You can also message your shopper directly, if you want to ask for specific things like greener bananas, or to add anything you forgot. You’ll see when they’ve completed the shop and are heading to checkout, and then be notified when they start driving to your house - you can then track them in real time.

You’ll get the best experience as a customer if you use the app ordering process to make it clear which items can’t be subbed and should be refunded, and what your back-up choices for your products are. You can also add notes such as ‘any bagged lettuce will be fine’ etc. At the moment, with the stores the way they are, be as flexible as you can! Keep your phone close and pay attention during the shop, so as not to send your shopper halfway back across the store to switch out that pasta sauce after all.

It’s pretty much obligatory to include at least the default tip of 5%, as your order will otherwise kick around for quite some time/ only be taken by the less experienced, more desperate shoppers - the Instacart payment alone in no way compensates adequately for the time, effort, and personal car use. Then you can choose to add more in cash, or afterwards on the app, depending on how your experience goes.

A 5-star rating should be given for anything that’s at least an acceptable experience - any lower, and the shopper risks not being able to get future work on the platform. Oh, and if you order alcohol, bear in mind that your shopper legally cannot substitute this if out of stock, so I’d recommend ordering two choices of wine or beer. You can always message your shopper and tell them to put one back and refund it, if you don’t actually want both!

Instacart is actually very good about making things right for the customer in the event you receive poor or damaged products, or if anything is missing, etc (missing in the sense of it was paid for but not in the bag, not missing because it was refunded as out of stock).

Overall, about half of the shopper’s eventual pay comes from the tips. So think about where you are in relation to the store, the size of your order, if you want multiple packs of water or cat litter, do you live in an upstairs apartment, will they have to wait at the deli for ages, and so on. Estimate how long such a shop might take, decide how much you personally price out that time spent, and then ultimately tip half of that price you think the overall job is worth.

Hope this helps! Any other questions, let me know. It really is an excellent service when done well, and we appreciate customers helping us out by being on point with quick decisions as we shop, and sending us a nice thank you message at some point along the way. Making a brief personal connection gives everyone a better experience 🙂

ddsrph

Thanks. Very helpful. I would definitely want to tip well.

sid nv

Are you familiar with the 22-cent tip code? I guess most Shoppers will not be, especially with a lot of new hires.

ddsrph

For example if I order $100 in food with 15% tip would I be billed the 115 and the shopper would get his base plus my tip of $15. Does the profit for Instacart and the shopper base pay come out of the food price?

scrubbedexpat091

We used instacart first time yesterday, it went alright but probably wouldn't use it again due to the cost involved. I just submitted the order with the 5% their service recommends on ordering, it was assigned to a shopper but then that first shopper never actually started shopping, after about 3 hours of getting an email every 30 minutes about how sorry they were, but delivery would be later, that went on, then another shopper was assigned at that one actually ended up shopping and delivering it to us. 3.99 instacart fee + $6.44 tip isn't really worth it, and will just try to use Save On (western Canada chain) next time as they use their own in house drivers and not allowed to accept tips, just pay a flat $3.95 delivery charge.

Some of the gig apps are having trouble finding people to actually work these days, those who had a real job and did gig apps on the side have stopped doing the gig apps as they wont qualify for the assistance programs in Canada if they have any income, so unless one can make $500 a week working for these apps, makes more sense to stay home, not work and wait this virus out.

kodokan

I am, but in around 2,000 deliveries I’ve personally never had a customer use it.

kodokan

Some of it comes from the delivery fee and service fee Instacart charges, on top of the tip (no idea why they split those out; I expect the nickel and diming nature of it is irritating to most customers). And yes, there’s a food mark up in some - most? - stores, depending on their individual contract with that store. At Aldi, for example, it’s about 10%.

kodokan

Hmm... I expect it wasn’t really assigned. Once we accept, we have 30 mins to get to the store before we get a notification; 15 mins later we get a final warning, and another 10-15 mins later the order is removed (and creates a ‘demerit’ mark for that shopper). There’s definitely a lot of unusual craziness and extensive order delays right now. That said, it is possible now for a shopper to accept an order, see the details more fully and think it through, then drop it; I don’t know how that might show on the customer end as it’s a very new change.

$10-11 for (usually) the best part of an hour of someone’s time and their car and extra tax costs is extraordinarily reasonable, but yes, there are cheaper alternatives. Kroger Pickup is currently free, but then you have to go out to collect, which may not be convenient with kids, if you’re sick, etc. And there’s no contact with the shopper during the process, so although subs will be offered, all you can do is accept or reject what you’re given. In comparison, I would be explaining what alternatives were actually on the shelves, suggesting replacements, sending photos of options, lists of ingredients, condition of produce, etc - full ‘remote control’ shopping. (If that’s what the customer wants - sometimes what they want is for you not to really bother them.)

scrubbedexpat091

May not have, the status page just shows it was assigned to a shopper but then nothing happened for several hours except emails saying it would be delayed, and pushed back the time over and over, then the name changed and shopping happened, don't really know what the entire issue was, wasn't a big deal, and may have well just been a glitch in their system.

I am not sure how it works with instacart either when your using the stores website who happens to outsource to instacart, so all the ordering and transaction was done through the grocery stores website, but the shopping and delivering part through instacart so I didn't actually use their app.

Most store here just offer pick up, Save On is about the only one who does delivery but only from some store locations, but its completely in house, with their own employees and their own vans, their drivers can't accept tips, but they are paid $17/hr with usual benefits like extended health and such, its also a union job with regular increases in wage, but of course you can't pick and choose when you work, and has none of the flexibility, so you work when the stores needs you and not necessarily hen you want to work.

Steerpike

Fantastic write-up! Thank goodness you have moved up in your career! If I was still working I'd try to hire you as a documentation guy or a business analyst or something!

Must the shopper immediately deliver the goods as soon as the shopping is ended, or are they allowed to do, say, 'two shops' in succession, stuffing the first shop in the trunk and going back to do the second, in order to 'batch' the deliveries (assuming both destinations were close)? My fear living in AZ is that it will be hotter than hell outside soon, and the time from 'cool' store to my door is a critical period for fresh and frozen goods. I go shopping with a cooler in the summer so I can immediately put the most critical items in the cooler for the trip home (and many stores actually offer free ice in small bags as a 'courtesy' to clients). Variation - could an instacart shopper run two 'carts' at once, for two customers, as another way to 'double up'?

What if I really like the shopper ... can I say, "you did a great job - here's a big tip. Would you like to be my personal shopper next week, and I'll give you my list directly and I'll give you an 'x'% tip, and that will all go to you instead of Instacart"? I'm sure it's against the rules but a 'good' shopper may be a great resource to find.

Jerseygirl

I have wondered about that. I suppose payment could be a problem...especially as handling cash seems to be a no no at present.

kodokan

Aw, thanks! I like making processes more efficient for all concerned 😊

Instacart sends out what they call a ‘batch’, which can be one, two or three orders for the same store, combined into one job. Sometimes the grouping makes sense, where the orders are fairly small and the delivery addresses are close together; this is usually the case for stores like Kroger/ Frys, where there’s one in every neighborhood. Sometimes it’s absolute nonsense, like a batch of, say, two Costco orders with deliveries 15 miles apart.

Shoppers can only have one active batch they’re working on at a time, so even when I can look at the offers screen and see two separate orders for the same store that would make sense to do together, I can’t take more than one of them. Multiple order shopping is only something that can be set by Instacart (and typically paid out as if it’s just one order...)

The Shipt delivery service does it differently - all orders are single ones, and the shopper can choose to take two at once that make sense for them.

Shoppers should be using insulated bags and ice packs, but I can tell from customer comments (*delighted tone* Oh, you have all the cold things in bags, wonderful!) that not everyone does. In Ohio, I find regular insulated bags/ ice packs is enough for the typical ‘no more than 20-30 mins in the car’, but I used to live in AZ and if I was shopping there, I’d have an industrial level cooler in my trunk! Frozen pizzas and ice cream will melt as soon as you look at the things.

Soliciting customers to place orders outside of the platform is obviously a breach of contract, but there is a 3rd party app called Dumpling that I’ve heard of people using. It’s a genuine hands-off intermediary which enables the order process and manages the payment with a pre-authorized card, but expects the shoppers to find their own customers and set their own schedule with them, and set their own rates for service provision. The shopper than pays Dumpling a fixed fee per order for providing the backend services, I believe - I haven’t used it myself. That would be one way to work with a specific personal shopper, although it’s still very much in its infancy and coverage is sparse. And of course the shopper is then personally bearing the risk of customer fraud (claiming perfectly good items are damaged or missing), although that’s presumably far less likely to happen with a known someone that you’re shopping for regularly!