Instacart Adds Jewel-Osco to 1-hour Delivery Service

Crowdsourced grocery delivery service Instacart has added Jewel-Osco delivery for its Chicago-area customers.

This is the fifth store Instacart has added since expanding to Chicago in September; other retailers include Whole Foods, Dominick’s, Costco and Mariano’s. The company also has further expanded its delivery area to include the North Park and Portage Park neighborhoods.

According to Instacart Founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta, Instacart’s Chicago service is growing at a faster pace than San Francisco did – just eight weeks after launch, the company was serving more deliveries in Chicago than it did in its 40th week in the Bay Area. “Our research showed that demand in Chicago would be strong, but it’s even higher than we expected,” said Mehta. “We’ve been adding dozens of personal shoppers each month to keep up.”

Mehta said that Instacart added Jewel-Osco delivery service as a result of customer demand, and in response to the closing of Dominick’s later this month. “We wanted to give our customers another alternative in those neighborhoods,” said Mehta.

Instacart leverages a crowdsourced labor force dubbed “Personal Shoppers” who shop for and deliver grocery orders using their own vehicles, eliminating the need for infrastructure such as warehouses, trucks and full-time drivers. Instacart is not affiliated with the stores.

Instacart service is available in 23 Chicago neighborhoods: Lake View, Lincoln Park, Logan Square, West Town, Near West Side, Lower West Side, Near North Side, Loop, Near South Side, Avondale, Uptown, North Center, Andersonville, Ravenswood, Edgewater, North Park and Portage Park; plus portions of Irving Park, Albany Park, Douglas, Bridgeport, Armour Square and McKinley Park.