Fuck instacart. Pay your workers their value.
Also I just never use instacart. There's like 5 groceries I can walk to (in NYC). If I had to order, I'm pretty sure there are better options.
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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Instacart and such make their money off more people using their service. Which their service is something that shouldn't actually be affordable off most people's income.
If people actually consider how much time things take and the costs involved, and obviously the company is scraping money off to be profitable as well. So if you ask someone to pick up $30 worth of groceries because you were busy and you live 5 miles from the store. One should assume it is going to take someone 10 minutes to drive to your place from that store. So another 10 minutes to get to that store. It's going to take 10 minutes to find your items, 5 minutes to check out. Time to get to and from the parking lot and return the cart, maybe 2 minutes. Drop off times 1-15 minutes (because yes people order cough medicine, Advil, wine, etc and they will be required to wait for people to show up at their door and scan their ID, which many aren't ready, are down the street or don't know where their ID is or they live on the 3rd floor in a gated community. And if they aren't there, you have to wait 10 minutes before you can leave anyways to see if they show up. But for sake of conversation, we'll say 1 minute.
So we are looking at around 38 minutes +10 miles driving (which companies list at .70 cents a mile to cover gas and wear and tear now).
So if the driver were to be getting paid $20/hr, that's $19.67 you would need to be paying before Instacart takes out their share. Which a quick search says they take 5-10%. Of which number I'm not sure so let's say $3.
So with those numbers you should expect to pay $52.67 for $30 worth of groceries, and the driver will be paid under $20 an hour. Because they are not guaranteed to get another order when that order ends. They could not get another for an hour or more, but usually not. Otherwise they wouldn't be working that area.
So what really happens is you pay about $38.76. (just added $30 to a Kroger cart to check on instacart, $2 tip was automatic).
So that's $8.76 over the $30 in groceries.
If we take out what is required by the government (70 cents per mile) for businesses to pay for the use of a person's vehicle.
They make $2.78/hour on that drive.
So the drivers are hoping for people to tip high, and then to have vehicles that degrade at lower than what businesses are required to pay for vehicle degredation. And that they don't have to wait between trips. People working instacart are doing it because they cannot find a better job at that time. Sure maybe someone gives a $10 tip. But in that scenario that means they got paid an extra $8 on $2.76/hr.
Can people make more, sure. But that's the basis that instacart is built on. Of course they won't be profitable many places if they had to pay $20/hr and then give the tip to the driver.
The Business model is based off screwing desperate people to help people acquire a service they can't normally afford.
Those are some very tight time estimates. I suggest you take a stopwatch with you next time you shop for groceries.
Also, you're ignoring the markup Instacart adds to items (last I checked, 10-15%).
Also, mileage is currently 67¢/mile, not 0.7¢/mile.
Yeah the times I tried to keep minimal
There is no markup on items on stores like Kroger/Walmart the prices will all be the same as the shelf. If you buy from Publix they will be marked up. I assume because they know the customers are already willing to pay more.
Just for a heads up it was .67 cents in 2024, went up to .70 for 2025. Not sure if it's because cars kept going up or gas, I don't know how they calculate that.
Edit: I was running some on days off earlier this year to try to pay off some things. Kroger is one of the quickest stores in my experience, everything else goes up in time.
Thanks for the attempted update, but 0.7¢ - seven tenths of a cent - is still 1% of 70¢.
Last I checked, Instacart marked up all stores.
Maybe it does in your area. It's not hard to check though, price of item in Instacart app, matches price of item on Kroger app. Right now it's 2.99 for a gallon of milk on both at my local store.
If an item in store doesn't match the price it was in the app their app freaks out when you try to check out and denies the purchase. Stupid things happen all the time like that. Like if someone goes and puts a cheaper price on half the ground beef because they want to get it out of inventory, it doesn't match the price in app so you'll have to do a "replacement" of 80/20 ground beef for 80/20 ground beef which will notify the customer that they didn't have it and ask for approval if they didn't set their purchases to approve for replacements or what not. (I dont order off instacart, so I'm not familiar with that side as much, just the taking/picking up of the orders).