VISALIA – In the days following cyber Monday a new web-based home grocery delivery service launched in Visalia. Instacart officially opened its second location in the central valley on Nov. 29.
“Over the past year we’ve seen incredible demand in the Visalia area,” Senior Regional Director, Sean Twersky said. “We work with a variety of local retailers to provide the freshest, highest quality groceries to our customers. We’re also excited to build a world class shopper community, where we can offer fun and flexible income earning opportunities for our shoppers, who ultimately deliver this amazing service to the community.”
This service takes after the web-based car ride services Uber and Lyft. Customers can go online, or onto the Instacart app and make their orders. They also are able to choose a delivery window up to seven days in advance. Once an order is placed a “personal shopper” will then drive to the store or stores in their own car and conduct the shopping.
Included in the service customers will be able to watch as each item on their list is taken off the shelf. The shopper then scans the item with their cell phone. As this happens both the customer and shopper can communicate back and forth. This allows the customer find an alternative item if something is out of stock or if the shopper has any concerns over the quality of the items available.
While the items available to choose from are mainly groceries the shopper can shop for non-food items such as household products, makeup, and even pots and pans. Customers can even ask the shopper to pick up items not found on the services app or web site.
With this service in Visalia it will be able to cover more than 100,000 households, not to mention bring more than 100 new shoppers to the stores. Some of the stores that customers will be able to purchase from are Smart and Final, Costco, CVS and Petco. Customers located in areas such as Visalia, Farmersville, Ivanhoe, Tulare, Porterville, Strathmore, Plainview, Terra Bella, and more.
There are memberships and delivery fees included in this service. For orders of $35 or higher a customer can be expected to pay a $5.99 fee. If a customer signs up for the Instacart Express membership that fee is erased. Instead after a free trial period the customer will pay $14.99 a month or $149 a year for free same day delivery.
Instacart is a San Francisco-based company that began offering their service five years ago. After expanding to other parts of the country which included Northern and Southern California they opened up their Fresno location last September.
