A new grocery shopping service is in town.
Last week, Instacart rolled out in greater Lewiston-Auburn and 21 other markets. The service works off an app that allows people to remotely shop at local stores — in this area, for now, that’s Shaw’s, BJ’s Wholesale Club, CVS and Petco — pay with their phones and have the order delivered within an hour, two hours or days later.
Some stores charge more for their goods via app than they do in person. Walker Dieckmann, Instacart’s general manager in the Northeast, said that’s noted in the app.
There are flat fees related to delivery. For example, $5.99 for an order arriving in two hours. At the virtual checkout, there’s also a 5 percent service fee going to the company and an option to tip your driver.
Instacart is based in San Francisco and is in 240 markets across the country. It launched in Portland in December 2017.
The company expects to have up to 100 local shopper/drivers, but Dieckmann wasn’t able to say how many it has at startup. They’ll be identifiable in local grocery aisles by the green lanyards around their necks, according to Dieckmann.
This story was originally published in “The Buzz: Fireside Inn’s half-million-dollar makeover.”
This story was updated Thursday at 12:37 p.m.
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