There has been a great rise in the amount of people who use online delivery system since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, before this outbreak the online grocery system was practically struggling to gain people’s attention and survey showed that in 2015 only 15% of people used online shopping and in 2018 only 36% of the world population but now that people are scared of going out of their homes to purchase an item they need, the rate of adoption has spread to a whopping 55%.
The Rise of Instacart.
Instacart is an online delivery system that partners with physical stores and picks up required items by shoppers/workers from those physical stores and immediately delivers it to customers, as a fast growing company instacart has been noticed to cover a huge 80% of U.S homes. While going to a grocery store to get your groceries, those you see in the shopping centres might be instacart staff and not people who have come to get groceries for themselves. Instacart places its charges on customers depending on the weight of the ordered items and the distance covered.
Instacart was launched in San Francisco when household delivery system was not really a thing to believe in, it was in the year 2012 when some companies who had a similar idea had failed and some like the amazon fresh were only struggling to remain in the market, the CEO of Instacart Apoorva Mehta who had at that time retired from his job to start his own business but he had failed on twenty (20) different occasions when he began Instacart, it was gradually growing and he had partnered with ‘’whole foods’’ until Amazon got into the system and completely took over whole foods, amazon was no way one that Instacart could compete with at that point, so he looked away from doing business with whole foods but got partner with five other business stores who were also top stores as at 2017. Currently, Instacart has gained access into the heart of major retail stores in the United States.
Current Complains from Instacart Workers.
As Instacart grows, its workers have been complaining so much about not being adequately paid, the coronavirus pandemic has made a lot of increase for the company but its workers are trying to file a lawsuit against the company for not providing adequate health care facilities. After the complaints made, the company provided safety materials to its workers.
The company provides an option for customers to tip workers after paying the usual delivery fee but they also have the right to cancel the tip within three days, which does not sit well with some of the workers who have had their tips cancelled after some days.