On Tuesday a San Francisco company will begin offering grocery delivery service in the Spokane area. Instacart is already doing business in several other American cities, competing with Amazon and several other companies.
Remember when the grocery store around the corner would make deliveries? That service generally went away, but is now being revived now that online shopping is becoming more popular.
In Instacart’s case you download the company’s app or go to its website, where it offers groceries from a wide range of national retailers, including Costco, Albertson’s and Petco. Then you specify when you want your order delivered. Instacart’s Sean Twersky says the standard delivery fee is $5.99 if you order $35 or more to be delivered two hours or later. You pay more if you want it in an hour.
Twersky says the service is offered in cities all over the U.S. He says Spokane has become an attractive market.
“One of the biggest things we look at is where have folks proactively requested that Instacart come. We combine that with where do we have relationships with retailers already in place. And Spokane was a nice mix of both of those two," Twersky said.
"We’ve been growing in Seattle. We’ve been growing in Portland. The Pacific Northwest continues to grow for us, so all of those reasons made Spokane a great next step,” he said.
Instacart says it will deliver to homes in Spokane, as far east as Spokane Valley, south as far as Valleyford and north to the Mead area. It says it has hired more than 100 local drivers.
