Target Expands Instacart Trial To San Francisco

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Target started something new for that company about six weeks ago: grocery delivery service by partnering with the delivery service Instacart. It’s part of an effort to not only make same-day delivery an option, but to expand Target’s grocery business. The trial in Target’s hometown of Minneapolis was so successful, it’s expanding to another city already.

The Target/Instacart (Targetstacart? InsTarget?) partnership is now expanding to Instacart’s hometown and biggest market, San Francisco. The area is a veritable lab of different ways to shop at Target, with curbside pickup through the company Curbside also available in some stores. It appears that Instacart shoppers can order only groceries, while curbside pickup shoppers can order anything in the store that will fit in their car.

“Our goal is to make grocery shopping easier and more convenient, so that our guests can shop Target wherever, whenever and however they want,” the president of Target.com and mobile said in a statement. Yes, shoppers. Come to Target however you want: just make sure that you buy groceries at Target.

Partnering with Instacart gives the company access to delivery for customers who want it, but without investing in actually hiring its own drivers and order-pickers. Whether this remains what Target (and other grocery stores that want delivery) do in the future will be interesting to see, assuming that grocery delivery takes off at all among car-owning suburban customers.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist