Instacart

Leading specialty retailer Petco has expanded home delivery with Instacart.

Winston-Salem, N.C. - Lowes Foods, a locally-owned and operated grocery chain, has selected Unata’s customer engagement platform for a pilot which will offer a one-to-one e-commerce experience for its shoppers. Lowes’ new Click & Collect customer experience will include a one-to-one personalized homepage and personalized product recommendations across the shopping experience.

Lakewood, Colo. - Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage will provide grocery delivery service to customers in Denver in as little as one hour with the Instacart grocery delivery service. Delivery to Denver metro area residents and businesses begins March 20.

New York -- Whole Foods Market has set itself an ambitious agenda for 2015 with 38 to 42 new store openings, including relocations, for annual square footage growth of 9% to 10%. The company, which currently has 408 stores, remains committed to tripling its U.S. store count to 1,200 locations over the long term.

Austin, Texas – The husband or boyfriend who forgets to buy Valentines flowers until late in the day Feb. 14 now has a safeguard. Whole Foods Market and the Instacart grocery delivery app are offering Valentine’s flowers delivered in as little as one hour across 15 major U.S. metros.

New York -- The fast-growing online grocery delivery startup Instacart confirmed it has raised $220 million in a funding round led by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. This latest round of funding values the San Francisco-based company, founded in 2012, at a whopping $2 billion, according to various reports.

Framingham, Mass. -- By 2017, three times as many retailers as now will explicitly underpin their customer and operations strategies on 3rd platform technologies. That’s one of IDC Retail Insights’ top 10 worldwide retail predictions for 2015. IDC  revealed the predictions during a Web conference, IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Retail Agenda 2015 Predictions.        

Retailers who are blazing the way forward for grocery-as-service are winning the e-commerce battle.
 
The grocery game is not for the faint of heart. It’s a crowded, complicated category, with players ranging from multi-national supermarket kings to ever-present local mom-and-pop markets. Operational nightmares include supplier management and famously miniscule margins. But it’s grocery’s unique complexities that have protected it from e-commerce.
 
Until now.