Instacart Expands Enterprise Offerings with Display Ads and Order Management for Deli and Produce Items

Instacart has expanded the offerings under its Instacart Platform umbrella, a suite of enterprise-grade technologies designed to help grocers with their digital transformations. New capabilities include online and in-store solutions to capture new ad revenue, the ability to bring more of the store online and seamless end-to-end fulfillment solutions.

These new capabilities are now available to grocers across North America and are already being used by wholesalers like Associated Food Stores as well as retailers including New Seasons Market, Niemann Foods, The Fresh Market and Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace.

“Our goal is to expand and innovate our business to ensure we’re meeting our customers’ growing and evolving needs,” said Kevin Miller, CMO at The Fresh Market in a statement. “Through our partnership with Instacart, we’re able to leverage Platform technologies that have helped us seamlessly grow our ecommerce business. We’ve been impressed by Carrot Ads’ performance to date and we’re excited to explore new formats, like display ads, so we can better help CPG brands inspire consumers as they shop our ecommerce site. This will further unlock new digital revenue streams for our business, impacting our bottom line.”

Instacart launched Platform in March 2022 as the next step in its broader strategy to become the ecommerce and technology enabler of the grocery industry.

“At Instacart, we want to enable grocers of all sizes to grow, thrive and serve their customers, no matter how they choose to shop,” said Chris Rogers, Chief Business Officer at Instacart in a statement. “We’re proud to continue to expand the Instacart Platform to offer grocers new tools and technologies that help them evolve their online offering, create connected in-store experiences and develop an omnichannel strategy that supports the unique needs of their business and their customers.” 

The new Platform capabilities include:

• FoodStorm, Instacart’s order management system now supports items sold by weight, so grocers can now offer digital ordering, pickup and delivery for their produce, deli and meat departments through a single, connected platform;
• Rosie, the white label ecommerce solution for local and independent grocers that Instacart acquired in September 2022, is now integrated with Instacart fulfillment services to pick, pack and deliver orders. Independent grocers can now get everything they need for their ecommerce operations in one place, including customizable online storefronts, fulfillment and customer support; 
• The Carrot Ads retail media solution has been expanded to include display ads. Carrot Ads, which helps grocers establish and grow their retail media networks, now allows grocers to offer display ads to brands in addition to Instacart’s sponsored product solution. Carrot Ads also gives grocers and brands access to closed-loop measurement and insights on advertising campaigns; and
• Caper Carts, smart carts by Instacart, can now be managed remotely in real time via tablet, giving retailers a remote bird’s-eye view of their stores and making it easy to see how many carts are being used and what types of items are being shopped and to flag unusual behavior for audit.

“We’ve been using Rosie’s white label ecommerce technology for a long time, and we are very excited about the ability to tap into Instacart’s robust shopper community to pick, pack and deliver orders from each of our retailers’ owned and operated ecommerce sites,” said Thomas Horne, Senior Ecommerce Manager at Associated Food Stores in a statement. “We believe this integration will help us expand our service to more people in our communities. Rosie and Instacart offer the only ecommerce solution that enables retailers like us to offer end-to-end experiences to our customers.” 

“We care deeply about empowering grocers of all sizes to serve their customers and communities,” said Nick Nickitas, General Manager of Local Independent Grocers at Instacart in a statement. “Instacart is building technology to invest in the future of our retail partners, and we believe that local and independent grocers in particular can benefit from easy, affordable solutions that are built just for them.”