Kroger and Instacart team up for speedy delivery
Kroger and Instacart are teaming up to launch a new service aimed at serving customers in a hurry. Kroger Delivery Now is a 30-minute delivery service aimed at providing shoppers with fast and easy delivery of groceries, including Kroger’s expansive line of private label products. Kroger’s private label sales slightly increased in the second quarter of this year. The move marks another milestone for Instacart, who has performed well during the pandemic, and is looking toward an automated future.
The new service will offer 25,000 items available for quick delivery, including over the counter medicine, baby items, and more in addition to food and beverage items. Kroger Delivery Now creates a virtual convenience experience that makes faster delivery possible from the Kroger Family of Stores, benefiting customers across the country who live near a store, including Kroger, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Fry's, Mariano's, and Smith's locations.
"Kroger Delivery Now is a differentiated solution in the e-commerce industry, not just the grocery sector," said Rodney McMullen, Kroger's chairman and CEO. "Our new service provides customers with one more way to shop with us and addresses the importance of convenience and immediacy. Operationally, this service reaches up to 50 million households and it's an expansion of our thriving e-commerce model that demonstrates strategic interplay among our assets, expansive store network, supply chain, and dedicated fulfillment centers and fleet, joined by Instacart's unrivaled fulfillment model and last-mile technology to provide our customers with anything, anytime, anywhere without compromise.”
With the launch of Kroger Delivery Now, Instacart is also unveiling the Convenience Hub on the Instacart Marketplace, a new product experience that streamlines convenience shopping for customers. Through the new Convenience Hub, customers in nearly every major U.S. city can now shop for convenience essentials 24 hours a day, seven days a week with free Priority Delivery in as fast as 30 minutes for Instacart Express members on orders over $10.
“We're proud to expand our long-time, strategic partnership with Kroger and together unveil Kroger Delivery Now – an entirely new way for customers to access convenience delivery nationwide,” said Fidji Simo, Instacart CEO. “Kroger Delivery Now, available only on Kroger.com and the Instacart Marketplace, reimagines the modern convenience store by leveraging the entire network of iconic Kroger Family of Stores brands to offer 30-minute delivery to customers for the first time nationwide. Instacart has become a powerful retail enablement platform and today's expansion of our Kroger partnership is another example of our commitment to develop new solutions that help retailers grow and meet the evolving needs of their businesses and customers."
The Kroger Family of Stores and Instacart first partnered in 2017 and today offer two-hour grocery delivery and now 30-minute delivery nationwide. The companies expanded their partnership in 2019 to include alcohol delivery, and today Instacart powers alcohol delivery from nearly 1,500 Kroger Family of Stores across 15 states. Instacart’s delivery service reaches 85% of U.S. households and 80% of Canadian households.