>$400 million round of venture funding As it stands now, I believe Instacart will fail and this money will be wasted. The only hope for the company is to be acquired by someone larger looking to bootstrap grocery delivery (or maybe Uber or Amazon or something).

I regularly use Safeway grocery delivery https://shop.safeway.com/ecom/home and I've always been happy. Delivery fees can get as low as $4 while grocery items are (I assume) the same price as inside the store.

Instacart needs to do something different. Why don't they just copy Blue Apron/Hello Fresh and offer meal packages with all the ingredients and recipe? Hell, I'd be way more interested in the service if I could get that along with groceries.

Postmates

Blue Apron

Hello Fresh

Instacart

Amazon Fresh

etc etc

These companies need to become each other, before Amazon becomes all of them. It seems like the biggest innovation from Instacart I could find was "the company wasn't collecting beverage can and bottle deposits accurately until recently, and the fix has increased gross margins by 25 cents on average deliveries nationwide.". This company is doomed.

Side note, I still can't get over the fact that I can't view a single item they offer without creating an account. Even going to browse their website for this comment, I walk away disappointed.