Standing in the produce section of a Publix in Golden Gate Estates, Allison Jenness surveyed the bananas.
“I look for ones that are a little green still,” she said, “so I know they’re not going to go bad the next day.”
She looks for juicy grapes and just-ripe avocados, the same things she’d buy for her own family, even though she has no clue who it is she’s shopping for.
“The app won’t tell me the address until later,” Jenness said, “until after I check out.”
When an Instacart order comes in, Jenness sits glued to her smart phone.
The app she uses as a personal shopper for the grocery-delivery company is, in essence, her boss. It tells her which location of what store she needs to go to (say, the Publix in Bonita Springs versus the Costco in North Naples).
Once she’s at the store, the app gives her the customer’s shopping list, “and then the timer starts,” Jenness said.
“I feel like I’m on that old game show ‘Supermarket Sweep.’”
The timer tracks how efficiently Jenness rounds up boxes of cereal and packagesof ground beef. It stops once she checks out, before finally giving her an address, “where the groceries need to go,” Jenness said.
It sounds like a scavenger hunt, but this is life as an Instacart shopper.
The national grocery-delivery service, which partners with Publix, Costco, Whole Foods, Petco, Total Wine and ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, launched in Southwest Florida last week. It joins the likes of Shipt and the Fort Myers-based StockPantry in the local grocery-delivery market.
And it’s a hot market to be in.
Tuesday, Shiptannounced it had raised $40 million in additional financing, on top of $23 million the Alabama-based startup had already raised. It plans to expand its delivery service to more than 100 metro areas in the next 12 months, according to an article on forbes.com.
Instacart, however, remains the grocery-delivery giant, having raised $400 million during a financing round in March, which now has the San Francisco-based company valued at $3.4 billion according to CNN Tech.
Shipt, Instacart and their ilk ostensibly deliver groceries, but for shoppers and customers alike, the true allure of these services is freedom.
Jenness is 37 and the mother of six kids in Naples. Her husband owns a moving company. She owned a cleaning service for more than a decade, but gave it up to take care of their children.
“I’ve been looking for something flexible,” she said. “This is the best job I’ve ever had.”
Also:Shipt launches in SWFL
And:Shipt partners with Costco in Tampa
Jenness is one of more than 10,000 shoppers employed by Instacart across the country. She sets her own schedule, based around when her kids are in school, and the general range in which she’s willing to travel (Marco Island to Bonita Springs in her case, though she’s thinking of tightening it). If an order comes in at an inconvenient time, she’s allowed to decline it, “but you can’t do that too much or you’ll be penalized,” Jenness said.
Since Instacart’s local launch June 1, Jenness has been on more than 20 deliveries. If she works quickly and efficiently, Jenness said with tips she can earn $20 or more per hour, not accounting for gas.
On the receiving end of these deliveries are people like Molly Grubbs and Dyan Van Wagner, customers seeking a different kind of freedom — a release from crowded stores and long checkout lines and the time-sucking mundanityof semiweekly grocery runs.
“I was sitting in a meeting once, and things were kind of running long, and I look over and the woman next to me was on her phone picking out groceries on Shipt,” said Grubbs, 38, a working mom who lives in Fort Myers.
“Her schedule is probably as crazy as mine.”
Grubbs has only used Shipt a handful of times since it launched locally in November 2015. She hasn’t tried Instacart yet, but said she’d be open it to it.
Grubbs said Shipt has saved her in a pinch, on days in season when she faced an extra-long commute from her job managing the Healthy Life Center in Estero. And during a rare cold snap when she wanted to make chili but didn’t want to leave the comforts of her couch and her family.
“I had someone bring me beans and spices and the stuff I was missing,” Grubbs said, laughing. “It maybe wasn’t the smartest use, but it helped out that day.”
Van Wagner also works at the Healthy Life Center and is a single mom living in North Naples. She uses Wal-Mart’s online ordering service. She shops on the app and arranges pickup without ever entering the store.
“I usually do it once a month. It does save, to me, a lot of time,” Van Wagner said. “You’re not dealing with kids saying, ‘Let’s go look at that,’ or ‘I want to get this,’ so it saves you from that, and it saves you from the extra spending on things you don’t need.”
Also: Uber, Lyft could get boost from Florida senate
An hour not spent at the grocery store is an extra hour to do with as you please:play with kids, go for a walk, read a book or "sit in traffic,” Grubbs said, again with a laugh.
“Exactly, just deal with life,” Van Wagner added.
Back at Publix, Jenness took her mock Instacart order out to her car. She showed how she'd put cold items into a cooler before pulling up the delivery address on her GPS.
“Then it’s off to wherever,” she said, “and hopefully I’m back in time to pick up the kids.”
Connect with this reporter: @ATometich (Twitter)
Convenience delivered: Shipt v. Instacart
SHIPT
Came to SWFL: Nov. 2015
Based: Birmingham, Alabama
How it works: Customer become Shipt membersand place orders for grocery delivery using the Shipt app. Shipt's personal shoppers deliver orders from local stores in as little as an hour.
Cost: Memberships cost $99 per year or $14 per month with free shipping on orders over $35 and a $7 delivery fee for orders less than $35, plus tip.
Local partner stores: Publix, ABC Fine Wine & Spirits
More:shipt.com
INSTACART
Came to SWFL: June 1
Based: San Francisco
How it works: Instacart partners with local shoppers to deliver groceries from local stores in as little as an hour.
Cost: $3.99 for two-hour delivery, $5.99 for one-hour delivery on orders of $35 or more, plus tip;fees may vary based on the number of items in your order, and surcharges may be applied during busy delivery times
Local partner stores: Publix, Whole Foods, Costco, Petco, Total Wine, ABC Fine Wine & Spirits
More:instacart.com
