Online grocery delivery provider Instacart has rolled out grocery delivery service in Brandon, as reported by the Brandon Sun earlier today.
The service, offered in conjunction with our Real Canadian Superstore, takes orders by smartphone app and website. On a quick browse of the Instacart site it appears one can order from most popular grocery categories including meat, produce, bakery and frozen foods.
On the sample order I filled out this afternoon, delivery was said to be available within 2 hours at a cost of $3.99 plus a service fee which is described as covering a broad range of operating costs for the Instacart platform. In my case the service fee was $2.74 on my order of $54.75 and when I updated my cart to include $168.65 worth of items the fee was $8.43. In both cases that represented about 5% of my cart value.
Brandon has seen competing offerings in online grocery order and pickup services from both Superstore and Walmart in recent years and delivery would seem to be the next logical step from there. If you’ve given the new delivery service a shot, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the experience and what scenarios you’d see yourself using it under.
Same-day grocery delivery has also been offered by Brandon’s Heritage Coop store with orders being taken by phone on all items offered in their store at a cost of $8 per delivery.
All in all it will be fun to watch how this space evolves in the coming years as companies find more and more ways to integrate tech with their offerings.
Updated, 6:35pm February 28: Included additional pricing information