Mobile grocery shopping comes to campus
Students now have the option to shop and have groceries delivered with the use of their phone. Instacart, an app, lets people pick groceries from local stores, which is later delivered through a personal shopper for a fee.
July 13, 2017
Beginning today, it will be possible for residents of Champaign County to do all of their grocery shopping online when the grocery-delivery service Instacart expands into the area.
Instacart is an American company that allows people to order their groceries from various retailers using their app.
The groceries are delivered by a personal shopper on the same day that the order was placed. The app allows its consumers to shop from local retailers such as Schnucks, CVS and more.
The Instacart delivery fee is $5.99 for orders of $35 or more, or $7.99 for orders under $35. All orders must be $10 or more. When the demand for delivery is extra high, an additional “busy pricing” fee may be charged. The amount of the fee depends on how busy instacart is.
According to the company’s website, first time shoppers will receive their orders without having to pay a delivery fee.
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But how do University students feel about the time-saving app?
“Right now I don’t know if it’s relevant to me because I live two blocks away from a grocery store, so I don’t know if I would actually use it,” said senior Steven Plutchak. “But maybe if I lived farther away from County [Market], since that’s the only grocery store we have, it would be something that I’m interested in potentially.”
Joshawn Hill, a sophomore, said she can see the benefits to the app. “I won’t have to travel or get on a bus to go to Wal-mart to get groceries,” she said. “Not a lot of students have cars so it’s hard to get the groceries that they want.”
