Instacart to distribute health kits to shoppers
An on-demand grocery delivery giant is adding to its efforts to promote shopper well-being.
Instacart will provide free health and safety kits to full-service shoppers that include face masks, hand sanitizer, and thermometers. The company worked over the last several weeks with several third-party manufacturers, in consultation with medical and infectious disease experts, to source and develop the kits.
The kits will be available to Instacart full-service shoppers to order at no cost beginning the week of Monday, April 6, via a shopper website. Shoppers will be able to request a kit by registering with their Instacart shopper email address. For brick-and-mortar shoppers, Instacart has also sourced and will be directly distributing face masks at retail locations where the company has in-store operations.
Cloth masks provided by Instacart are washable and reusable, an made of cotton and polyester to use while shopping. These are multi-use masks that do not impact the healthcare and medical industry's supply. Instacart has sourced its own ethyl alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and is providing a reusable forehead thermometer that provides a temperature check in approximately 15 seconds.
In addition, Instacart will launch a new COVID-19 resource center to share details of its efforts to respond to the pandemic.
"We're singularly focused on the health and safety of our shopper community. Our teams have been working around the clock over the last few weeks to proactively secure personal protective equipment like hand sanitizer and face masks, without taking away valuable resources from healthcare workers given inventory delays and global supply scarcity," said Nilam Ganenthiran, president of Instacart. "We want to provide customers with an essential service they can rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart personal shoppers. As COVID-19 evolves, today's health and safety solutions will be tomorrow's table stakes, and our teams are working quickly to introduce new services and features to ensure our shopper community is supported as this situation unfolds."
The company is introducing a number of other guidelines, resources, and new features to support the health and safety of all Instacart shoppers as it plans to bring on an additional 300,000 full-service shoppers during the next three months to meet escalating demand for grocery delivery and pickup in North America.