Instacart Brings Same-Day Grocery Delivery Service to Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 3, 2014) - Instacart (www.Instacart.com), the only service that can deliver groceries from multiple local stores within an hour, announced today that it has launched the first same-day grocery delivery service in Los Angeles. Beginning today, customers can order virtually any items carried in their neighborhood Whole Foods Market and have them delivered in as little as one hour. Additional stores will be added in the coming weeks, allowing customers to combine items from multiple stores into one order.

Customers can open an account at www.Instacart.com, and get free delivery on their first order of $35 or more. Instacart's initial coverage area includes the following neighborhoods in Los Angeles County: West Hollywood, Hollywood, Fairfax, Beverly Grove, Sawtelle, West LA, Mid-Wilshire, Santa Monica, Venice and Marina Del Rey. For a full map of coverage, visit https://www.instacart.com/locations.

Apoorva Mehta, founder of Instacart, said that in recent months the company has fielded thousands of requests to expand its service to LA, the second most populous city in the US (after New York, where Instacart launched on March 26). "We expect that the traffic and long commutes in LA will drive demand similar to what cold weather does for the east coast. Instacart will allow LA residents to avoid making those detours to the grocery store while continuing to get the healthy foods they love," said Mehta. "We're really excited to bring Instacart to LA and give folks an easy way to get great food delivered right to their doorstep."

Originally launched in San Francisco and since expanded into many other major cities, Instacart has disrupted the traditional grocery delivery space with its crowdsourced labor force dubbed "Personal Shoppers" who shop for and deliver grocery orders providing their own transportation in as little as one hour. This eliminates the need for costly infrastructure such as inventory, warehouses, trucks and full-time drivers. Instacart is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Whole Foods Market.

How it works:

• Customers go online to www.Instacart.com, select their city/store, add items to a virtual cart, and then choose a delivery window (within one hour, within two hours, or some scheduled time in the future) and check out.
• An Instacart Personal Shopper accepts the order on his/her smartphone, uses the Instacart Shopper app to guide them through shopping, and then delivers the order to the customer in the designated delivery timeframe.

The vast majority of Instacart customers select two-hour delivery for a charge of just $3.99. One-hour delivery is also available, for $14.99. The minimum order size is $10. For other FAQs, visit https://www.instacart.com/store#faq. 

Instacart also offers an Amazon-Prime like service called Instacart Express -- an annual membership that eliminates delivery fees for all orders of $35 or more. The cost is just $99. Customers can sign up for a free two-week trial at www.instacart.com/express.

In June 2013, Instacart raised $8.5M in Series A funding and announced its intention to expand to 10 additional major cities by the end of 2014. The company has since launched in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC and now Los Angeles, and continues to achieve double-digit, month-over-month new customer growth.

About Instacart
Instacart is the only service that can deliver groceries from multiple local stores within an hour, and is often less expensive for consumers than a personal, time-consuming trip to the grocery store. Customers in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC can choose from over 270,000 items from local grocery stores and large chains like Safeway, Whole Foods Market, Shaw's, Harris Teeter, BJ's Wholesale and Costco. Instacart is disrupting the traditional grocery delivery business with its approach, which utilizes a crowdsourced model of Personal Shoppers who provide their own transportation and smartphones to shop and deliver groceries to customers. This model eliminates the need for costly infrastructure such as warehouses, trucks and full-time drivers. Learn more at www.Instacart.com.