What is Instacart?

What is Instacart? Here is where you can get your delivery and driver questions answered here!

1. Are the prices the same as in the store? No.  This is essentially how they make money.  There is a premium they add on in order to pay their employees and make a profit. This is why the prices are higher when you use their service.
   
2. Are the Instacart shoppers employees? If you work for this company it would be as an independent contractor.  You will receive a shirt, id badge, etc., but you are not officially on their payroll.  You will be given a 1099 form at the end of the year and not a weekly or bi-weekly paycheck like you receive from a traditional employer.
3. Are you supposed to tip?  This is your choice.  The people working these gigs are pretty similar to an Uber driver.  Do you tip Uber?  If the answer is yes then you should also tip your shopper.
   

Instacart is a personal shopping and delivery service offered through an online portal and smartphone app. Instacart works by having the consumer (the person ordering groceries) provide a grocery list of items they want to have delivered. They use either the app or the website to checkout with the desired items.

At this point, the company provides various time slots with the designated cost for delivery to have your items picked up from the store and delivered to your house. Instacart uses people called 'personal shoppers' who are individuals who will go to the store, checkout with your items and deliver them to your house. The cost of this service is varied upon time slot and order total. However, the average cost of the service is 5.99 per delivery, which must meet a minimum amount per store that you would like groceries delivered from.

I personally would use this service, as I have used services like blue egg in the past and other grocery delivery services. I believe that this service provides a way for busy individuals to get groceries without having to worry about setting time aside to do the shopping. Working for them as a driver is going to be a difficult time for anyone who wants something that will be more focused on the pay, than the frustration of contract work.

No, I would not work for them as a driver because the system is based upon an available hourly schedule. You sign up to deliver groceries, but the amount of total drivers in contrast to total grocery orders means that you will most likely not be able to work on a consistent basis. Pay for drivers can be as low as ten dollars per hour, while some drivers have reported wages to hit or even exceed twenty five dollars per hour. This is based upon order amount and tips given by consumers.

To work for Instacart, you need to have three things. Firstly, access to a vehicle you can drive, secondly a smartphone that can download and access their application and lastly to be over eighteen years old.

I have tried to start a home based business before involving web design and programming. I was just over sixteen years old when I started it and I made great success. I was taking on clients as fast as I could finish with the current ones I had. All the while, I was juggling school and work on the side, which after a while became too much to bare.

I ended up stopping with my web design because it was taking too much time away from my studies, and I found that to be most important at the time. I have thought about doing it again some day, but it seems as though every time I go back to study the skill, there is another new programming language or design aspect that I need to study. It is overwhelming, and I would prefer to focus my energy on solidifying my career standing, than taking another risky business startup.