My experience with Instacart was great! But in my household, it's not for every week.
I shop at HEB once a week, which is one of the stores they offer (there are more). This weekly outing requires an entire morning because of the kids and the amount of food I buy for my family of seven. I'm not a grocery store hater per se but I'm very attracted to the idea of having a whole extra morning to devote to other activities. So the primary benefit, for me, is time.
The initial setup was lengthy. But if I use the service again, the order time will be nominal since all the items I selected are stored in order history. The website was efficient and user friendly. I was impressed with how easy it was to get started, although I did have to add a lot of "special" items that I know HEB carries but were not listed on the Instacart catalogue.
My shopper called me once to clarify about a few items; she was friendly easy to talk to. She found everything I ordered and delivered it to my house within the two hour time frame. Even helped me carry the groceries upstairs!!!
It was surreal to have the entire process completed and skip straight to the "putting away" step. I loved it!
What I did not love was the extra cost. There is a small delivery fee and tips are encouraged. However, they make money by slightly raising the prices on most items. Today's bill was about 25% higher than usual. Ouch.
So here's my final conclusion: I would use this service again but not every week. I can recall MANY late-pregnancy, postpartum, everyone's-sick, everyone's-home-for-summer days when this service would have been an absolute gamer changer and worth every penny!! I would recommend doing it at least once so that your basics are saved into their system. That way, when the disaster days hit, you can give yourself the gift of NOT grocery shopping.
That's my plan anyway.
Cheers!
