Instacart Expands To Chicago

<i>Mehta tells TechCrunch that “33 percent of the year, Chicago has some form of precipitation” and that his company has learned in the San Francisco area that “people just do not like grocery shopping when it’s raining.”</i><p>I think in Chicago he&#x27;s going to learn something about how much people like grocery shopping when it&#x27;s 15°F outside too...

My roommate just signed up for Peapod and got our first delivery last week. I am looking forward to trying out Instacart and comparing the experience. It seems like I&#x27;ve been seeing an increasing number of Peapod trucks around the city the past six months (maybe it&#x27;s just me), so I agree with the article&#x27;s suggestion that there is demand for the service in Chicago.<p>Edit: In case the team is reading, I&#x27;m also curious: Does Instacart have anyone (like an Operations Manager) in Chicago, or are all the logistics being handled remotely from SF?

I live in Chicago and a Trader Joes opened up near me about a week ago. This is the most fantastic news I&#x27;ve heard in a long time: cheap, good groceries delivered to my door!

What neighborhoods? Surely, not the whole city.

I really hope they expand to Seattle. I know Amazon Fresh exists and that Safeway does delivery here, but they don&#x27;t do same day delivery and its a lot more expensive than instacart. Some competition will do this area some good. If they can keep quality up and keep prices down, I know they can dominate this whole market.

Hoping they expand to my neighborhood soon so I can give them a try. I think there&#x27;s a big future in grocery delivery because there is so much energy expended per household buying groceries.<p><pre><code> - Drive to grocery store - Roam around store picking out groceries and putting in shopping cart - Remove all items from shopping cart, put them on belt to checkout - Take all bags of purchased groceries and put in shopping cart - Take all bags out of shopping cart, put in car - When you get home, take all bags out of shopping cart and bring into house</code></pre>

I cannot wait until they (hopefully) come to Austin. The only chances I have to go to the grocery store are at peak hours, which makes me dread the trip, and often causes me to put it off and eat out.

Everytime I think about using instacart I see the prices are all significantly higher than me schlepping my butt down to whole foods &#x2F; berkeley bowl and I don&#x27;t see it as worth it.

Chicago though?