Instacart launches new prepared foods hub
Instacart is rolling-out its latest app experience: Ready Meals. With Ready Meals, Instacart users can order prepared food from grocery retailers directly to their door as an alternative to ordering takeout.
The Ready Meals Hub launched in the Instacart App on Jan. 13, and features prepared foods from grocers like Publix, GIANT, Food Lion, Hannaford, Stop & Shop, Martin’s and Kroger. The new feature has a reach across 35 states and more than 4,100 grocery locations, and allows for prepared food delivery in as fast as 30 minutes.
At last year’s Retail Foodservice Innovation Summit, presented by Store Brands’ sister publication Progressive Grocer, speakers discussed how prepared food sales have been fueled by the pandemic, and how retailers can adapt to the changing landscape. According to food industry association FMI, a majority of home-cooked meals involve a combination of prepared and from-scratch elements (55%), and most include “ready-to-eat” items like pre-made salads and ready-to-eat meat (64%).
“With our new Ready Meals Hub, we’re dishing up inspiring, more affordable and nutritious food alternatives to restaurant delivery that make it easier for consumers to break up with takeout this year,” said Daniel Danker, vice president and head of product at Instacart. “We’re also helping retailers drive more sales and increase their ‘share of stomach’ when it comes to their customers’ daily mealtime decisions. From fresh soups and salads for a quick lunch to take-and-bake casseroles, pasta dishes and meat and seafood entrees for the family dinner, we’re proud to serve as a powerful enablement partner for retailers like Publix, GIANT, Food Lion, Hannaford, Stop & Shop, Martin’s, and Kroger, creating new ways for them to give busy people and families across the U.S. more ways to shop smart, eat healthy and feed their cravings faster than ever before.”
The launch of Ready Meals follows Instacart’s recent acquisition of FoodStorm, a SaaS order management system (OMS) that powers end-to-end order-ahead and catering experiences for grocery retailers. Instacart says it expects to expand the Ready Meals Hub to feature several more grocers, including ShopRite, and will work to make Ready Meals available to more retailers through Instacart’s enterprise technology offering.
“Instacart’s solution to showcase prepared meal items is a win for our customers,” said Erik Katenkamp, Publix vice president of omnichannel & application development. “In addition to the convenience of being able to order freshly prepared ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat items for rapid delivery, our customers can also include a handful of grocery staples in their rapid delivery order — making it easier than ever to grab lunch and a few items for tonight’s dinner, all in a single order."