Instacart expands its grocery delivery service to Oakland and Berkeley | Hacker News Reader

Instacart expands its grocery delivery service to Oakland and Berkeley

thenextweb.com

53 pointsapoorvamehta23 comments

I really love Instacart and use them often: they did a great job so far.

What I am consistently amazed at, is how they manage to get press for every new city or stores added. I mean, they are a successful Company but there are other cool growing Companies that get new clients or expand to new cities or launch new products, and we don't hear about them all the time. I don't blame them for getting press. I blame the press for being so pageviews driven that they don't deliver news or reporting anymore but press releases or newsletters' content.

Keep up the good work though!

I wouldn't look so deep into it. They got one tech blog to pick up the story, not 'press'. If you e-mail the tips@(techcrunch/thenextweb/theverge) e-mail with your startup launch, it's actually pretty easy to get the blogs to syndicate your story.

Fair enough ;-) Congrats on the newest version of the GetAround app...I am a user ;-)

Awesome! As an East Bay resident this is exactly what I have been waiting for!

Aww. You can't add Oakland or Berkeley & not have Berkeley Bowl as a grocery store option. =[

That would be newsworthy!

Agreed. Working on it.

Any plans for a college student discount?

Yeah! I didn't even realize there were other grocery stores other than Berkeley Bowl in Berkeley.

My wife, who has shopped at Berkeley Bowl for decades, has in the last couple of years been complaining bitterly about the quality of produce (and the price for said produce). She's been branching out to other places (farmer's markets, Trader Joe's, and sometimes Safeway).

Try Monterey Market for produce. Really good quality and generally less expensive than Berkeley Bowl, especially for seasonal stuff. But only buy produce.

My main problem with Instacart is that when shopping in person at Safeway, I can usually get 10-20% savings using my loyalty card. I don't get this benefit when using Instacart. This by itself makes me very hesitant to use it, even though my experience with Instacart has been nothing short of amazing (save for some products not being available, but that's not their fault).

I'm not sure how else you expect them to make money and stay in business if they shouldn't be charging you more. For me, such is the cost of convenience. If your money is more valuable than your time, then you can continue shopping at the grocery store yourself. :-)

They're already charging a flat rate for shipping. I just want them to be more transparent in their pricing.

While that's certainly fair, and I see your point, I don't see Safeway/Whole Foods/etc. telling you their profit margins either. The only reason you're taking issue with Instacart's pricing is because you know the price that you normally pay/they pay for the goods. :-)

safeway provides grocery delivery of its own which I believe automatically has the loyalty card discount: http://shop.safeway.com/ecom/home

How does this compare to something like FreshDirect in NYC? Used freshdirect for a long time and it always felt so amazing. The timing savings always makes me feel good about paying the higher cost.

I've never felt the need to order my groceries via an app, could have just been a web experience and I would have been just as interested in using Instacart. Always wondered why they started with an app.

Hope this expands to LA soon.

LA is coming soon. And, we do have a web app in addition to the iPhone & iPad.

Excellent.

I used this last week and it worked splendidly. Wish they were a little more transparent about the $35->free shipping offer being promotional, though. (After the first order it's $70->free shipping)

Could you please email cs@instacart.com with specifically what you mean (ideally, screenshots). We try to be very explicit about that but maybe we missed something. Thank you.

On that. You should be more explicit that CostCo delivery is $9.99 even for more than $70. I did not find anything about that on your site.

Thank you so much!

Please add pickup from Tokyo Fish Market and Berkeley Bowl, both in Berkeley, and maybe Mollie Stone's.

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