Instacart Takes Another Big Stand Against Systemic Racism

Instacart is expanding its racial equity work by launching a new, $1 million initiative to amplify Black-owned consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands.

The effort marks Instacart’s first program designed to support emerging Black-owned brands directly within the Instacart marketplace by leveraging the company’s robust advertising products and services. Instacart Ads offers self-service and managed ad services for more than 2,500 CPG brands of all sizes, helping them connect with customers in the digital aisles while online grocery shopping.

Through this new initiative, Instacart is offering Black-owned CPG brands the opportunity to reach a broader audience in the digital aisles with prominent advertising placement among over the 1 million of items available from the more than 600 national, regional and local retailers, and unique brand names featured on the Instacart marketplace. Eligible brands will receive Instacart Ads credits to use with the company’s flagship Featured Products offering throughout 2021.

As part of the initiative, Instacart is also establishing new resources for brands, including a designated team focused on supporting participating brands and a monthly training series to ensure brands maximize the impact of their advertising campaigns.

“As the largest online grocery platform in North America, our marketplace features millions of products for customers to discover while they shop online from their favorite retailers. As our service grows, we believe Instacart has a unique opportunity to further amplify Black-owned and Black-led brand partners in the digital aisles,” said Seth Dallaire, chief revenue officer at San Francisco-based Instacart. “We want Instacart Ads to make a lasting impact on the CPG ecosystem by equipping emerging Black-owned brands with the tools, resources and investment needed to excel in online grocery. This is just a first step as we continue to focus on delivering equitable outcomes for historically underrepresented entrepreneurs and brands and create more opportunities for more companies to flourish.”

Instacart Ads offers a full suite of advertising products anchored around Featured Product, including Delivery Promotions, Coupons and Hero Banners. The Featured Product offering gives brand partners premium digital shelf space with browse, discovery and search placements in high visibility areas across the Instacart marketplace. With Featured Product, advertisers can boost sales, increase trial and awareness, drive higher category share and manage campaigns in a self-service portal. 

The new effort builds on Instacart’s ongoing commitment to prioritizing Diversity, Equity, and Belonging and standing up against anti-Blackness and systemic racism through intentionally lifting up Black businesses within the Instacart marketplace. 

In April, the company posted on its blog all of the ways in which it is working to support the Black community, including:

1. Observing Juneteenth as an official company holiday moving forward for all corporate employees, both in the United States and Canada. 
2. Prioritizing three demographics in its talent strategy — Black, Women and Latinx Talent — and investing in Black Talent across the entire employee lifecycle. This means addressing the root causes of opportunities and increasing equitable outcomes for employees throughout their careers at Instacart. Specifically, there will be focused efforts such as transforming hiring, developing and retaining Black Talent.
3. Acknowledging and advocating that food insecurity is a social justice issue that disproportionately affects the Black community.
4. Leveraging a Volunteer Time Off policy and additional tools to ensure employee volunteering is scalable year-round and enables teams to more easily connect to causes they care about. 
5. Intentionally lifting up Black businesses within the Instacart marketplace.
6. Advocating for voting rights in the United States.

Instacart offer same-day delivery and pickup services to bring fresh groceries and everyday essentials to busy people and families across the United States and Canada. Instacart has partnered with more than 600 national, regional and local retailers, including unique brand names, to deliver from nearly 55,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in North America. Instacart’s delivery service is available to over 85% of U.S. households and 70% of Canadian households.