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Instacart, Waitr Enter Arkansas Food Delivery Market

2 min read

Instacart, an online grocery delivery service, began delivery service in the Little Rock area last week, making deliveries from stores like Kroger, Whole Foods Market, Natural Grocers, Petco and CVS.

Instacart, based in San Francisco, touts same-day deliveries in as little as one hour. The cost of a delivery for an order of $35 or more is $5.99, and all orders must be over $10.

The company, founded in 2012 by Apoorva Mehta, a former Amazon employee, is taking advantage of the continued customer demand for convenience, including online delivery. Instacart and German grocery chain Aldi just last week announced an agreement for Instacart to deliver Aldi groceries in Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta.

Online food shopping is rapidly increasing in popularity, according to a January report by the Food Marketing Institute and Nielsen. By 2025, the share of grocery shopping done online is expected to reach 20 percent, accounting for $100 billion in annual sales, the report said. “Initial findings from this study show that within the next decade, online food shopping will reach maturation in the U.S., far faster than other industries that have come online before,” the Food Marketing Institute said.

Instacart’s services are offered online at Instacart.com or through a mobile app.

As of midweek last week, Instacart was offering a free 14-day tryout of Instacart Express, a membership program like Amazon Prime that gives customers who pay a membership fee unlimited free delivery on all orders over $35. The annual fee for the Little Rock area is $149.

Instacart plans to hire more than 100 people to work as shoppers. Instacart customers add items to a virtual cart, choose a delivery window and check out. The shopper accepts the order on his smartphone, uses the Instacart shopper app to guide him through the shopping process and then delivers the order.

Joining the food delivery bandwagon in Little Rock and in northwest Arkansas is the Waitr app (online at Waitrapp.com), which offers restaurant delivery.

“Our decision to enter Arkansas, and specifically Little Rock, is a reflection of overwhelming public demand for a new restaurant on-demand delivery in the area,” Addison Killebrew, launch director for Waitr, said in a company press release. “Our distinct technology — from live monitoring of deliveries yielding faster door-to-door service, to the unique ability to provide full-color photography of every menu item from all participating Little Rock restaurants — has made Waitr stand out among competitors.”

The delivery charge is $5.

Waitr, based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, comes to Little Rock just a few months after the purchase of restaurant delivery service Chef Shuttle of Little Rock by Bite Squad of Minneapolis.

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