Not to mention the biggest problem with Instacart—the prices they charge you are completely made up and not the grocery's price. I understand paying a flat fee for delivery, but certainly not random and opaque markups.
Their Whole Foods deal delivered everyday store prices so that's why I didn't list this as a difference. In SF Costco and Safeway have markups but for example Bi-Rite, Rainbow, Smart & Final and Mollie Stone's do not.
I know Instacart used to mark up everything and people hated it. So they've taken to hiding the cost somehow.. Maybe they're asking the smaller stores to take it out of their margins, and they just can't get Safeway & Costco to do it. Maybe they're tricking customers into paying a 10% markup with their "service fee". That fee reportedly does not get passed on to the workers and is optional but most customers probably don't realize this.
Amazon doesn't have as much of a cost problem here because they have the Prime membership fee, plus economies of scale.
Ha! “Optional service fee” sounds like the reverse of “mandatory tip.
Yes, they have to pay the Shoppers a per-item fee, but, for the most part, the price that Insta is paying isn't the price that's listed on the shelf.