Grocery delivery service launches in Clovis

Instacart allows customers to have groceries and other everyday essentials delivered to their home by shoppers, like the one shown here, in as little as an hour. (Photo courtesy of Instacart)

Residents of the Fresno-Clovis area can now do their grocery shopping without leaving their homes.

Instacart, a popular national retail delivery service that delivers groceries to your home in as little as an hour, launched Tuesday in the Fresno-Clovis area. The service allows customers to select groceries from local retailers through a mobile app and have them delivered to their doorstep by a personal shopper.

“We’re a same-day grocery delivery service that allows you to get groceries from your local supermarket delivered to you,” said Instacart local operations manager Justin Reevers. “We’re launching here and we’re looking to service around 21 zip codes here in the area.”

After a high volume of requests for expansion to the Central Valley, Instacart made the move to expand to the Fresno-Clovis area, where it will serve over 218,000 households.

“Over the past year we’ve seen incredible demand in the Fresno area,” said Sean Twersky, Instacart Senior Regional Director. “We work with a variety of local retailers to provide the freshest, highest quality groceries to our customers. Expansion into Fresno gives us an opportunity to expand service in the California market.”

Service areas include Fresno, Highway City, Herndon, Muscatel, Burness, San Joaquin River Estates, Sierra Sky Park, Las Palmas, Locans, Goldleaf, Clovis, Gordon, Marshall Junction, Tarpey, Easton, Lone Star, Bowles, Mattei, Malaga, Elm View, Conejo, Monmouth, Oleander and Cecile.

Residents of these areas can order from select retailers like Smart & Final, Costco, CVS, and Petco with more options coming available in the future.

“We’re definitely always open to adding other local grocery stores,” said Reevers. “That’s something that we pride ourselves on, especially if we see something that customers are really interested in. We do have a couple others [grocery stores] on the pipeline but it just depends on the process and when contracts get signed.”

Instacart is also bringing income earning opportunities to the area as it recently hired over 100 shoppers.

“We’ve hired about 150 [shoppers] at the moment and we’ll be looking to hire more as we see demand take off here,” Reevers said.

How Instacart works: Customers go online to www.Instacart.com or open the Instacart mobile app, select their city/store, add items to a virtual cart, then choose a delivery window (within one hour, within two hours, or up to seven days in advance) and check out. An Instacart shopper accepts the order on their smartphone, uses the Instacart shopper app to guide them through shopping, and then delivers the order to the customer in the designated delivery timeframe.

For orders of $35 or more the delivery fee is $5.99. Customers also have the opportunity to save by signing up for Instacart Express membership, which enables unlimited, free one-hour delivery on orders of $35 or more. After a free trial period, Instacart Express membership is just $14.99 a month or $149 a year.

First time users can enter the code HIFRESNO (11/1 expiration) at checkout to get $20 off an order of $35 or more, plus a free first time delivery.

A native of Woodlake, Daniel Leon is a recent graduate of Fresno State with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism. Daniel served as Sports Editor at The Collegian, Fresno State’s student-run newspaper, prior to joining the Roundup. Got a story idea? Email him at editor@clovisroundup.com