From scooters to meal delivery to personal grocery shopping with delivery. Our latest gig adventure is with Instacart. Instacart is the answer to several questions. How to avoid the grocery store after work, even though I need to pick up some staple items? How do I get help to a sick friend/family member? How do I avoid the bitter cold weather and still get my wings and beer before the game starts? The answer is the Instacart App or the Instacart website. Based on your location you can choose from a couple of different stores such as Food Lion, Publix, CVS, Total Wine & More, Petco or Lowes Foods to name a few. Select your groceries and within a 2hr time frame they will be delivered to your location.
To be able to understand the process completely as a Instashopper I placed an order for a few items to come from Food Lion and had them delivered to my office. You are charged a delivery fee but you can also take advantage of your grocery store membership deals just be sure to input the card number before you check out, this will also help you with the Food Lion Shop n Earn rewards if ordering from Food Lion. It could take less than 2 hours to receive your order but keep in mind that your personal shopper is not a store employee and may be assigned multiple orders.
Once your order is assigned you will be notified via text with your shoppers first name, and that they have started shopping. If an item is not available and the shopper makes a substitution you are notified. At this point you should either approve the substitution or message your shopper through the APP if you want something else or request a refund through the APP. You can also add additional items if you suddenly remembered something.All changes should be reviewed as soon as possible otherwise the shopper will be calling you prior to checkout. No they do not have access to your phone number, the call is routed through Instacart. You will be notified that your shopper is in checkout and that no further changes may be made. After the checkout process is complete you will be notified that your shopper is on their way. After this point all you do is accept the groceries and the best way to thank your shopper in addition to your tip is to give them a 5 star rating.
Now for the Shopper side of the story...
Starts with an application through the website like all other side gigs find it here at Instacart Once approved you will be sent a lanyard and a debit card. It is VERY important to have your Instacart debit card with you EVERY time you accept a batch. The debit card is the property of Instacart and is in now way associated with any bank account which you might have. But before you get to accept a batch we need to get your hours scheduled. First go to the Menu and select Hours. You will start out with "Early Access Status" which means you get access to the available hours early in the week. Which means that at 9am e.s.t. you can select the hours you want to work. When you select your hours you are locked in so if you need to get out of the hours be sure to release or cancel hours at least 6 hours ahead of your shift start or it will generate an incident report. Too many of those and you will not get orders/batches sent to you. Early access status can be earned if you lose it but it will take about 3 weeks. You need to work 90 hours total over a 3 week period or 25 weekend hours. That doesn't mean you are shopping every hour, just that you are available to shop during the hours of your shift. You can be sitting at home folding laundry or out running errands and still be getting "credit" for the hours worked. You must be within your "zone" though for it to count. For example, I work in Raleigh which is one very large zone so I can sign up for hours for after work or I can pop over to Knightdale on the weekend for hours. Just recently most of Johnston County was approved and is considered the Clayton zone so I now have myself set up to work evening hours in Clayton. Most nights I am working on my Wildtree business or taking care of household chores. If I need to run out to Lowes Foods for an order I am only 10 minutes away and completely in the zone.
So now that you're approved and have your debit card and lanyard at the ready and your hours are set up; here comes your first notification. You will have 3 minutes to decide if you want to take the batch, be aware that you must accept 80% of all batches for the week to earn your $3 quality bonus. That is a $3 bonus for every time you earn a 5 star rating from a customer. Needless to say, I take all my batches because that bonus adds up. You will have about an hour depending on the order size to get the groceries and get through checkout. Most of the time and especially when I work evenings, Gabe will go with me and help out. He will take part of the list and I will take the other part so we split the work and have time to spare. Speaking of the list, you will want to look through it completely. While the app does its best to route you in the most efficient manner sometimes and item is in the deli section next to veggies and the app shows it to be at the end of the list making you think it is by the frozen foods. So whether you start on your left and at the bottom of the list to work up or start to your right and the top of the list down, always remember to look over the WHOLE list. Never be afraid to ask a store worker if you can't find something and if an item is unavailable follow the prompts in the APP for how to scan a substitution. I always find it best to establish a conversation with your customer through the APP if there are any changes made so that they can approve or disapprove prior to check out so that you won't need to place a call to them verifying changes. You will follow the prompts on the APP for check out. The only difference I have come across so far for checkout is that Publix requires you to use a 4 digit pin number which shows up right in the checkout screen so be sure to look for it in order to have the purchase approved. Next you swipe to start delivery and use the Navigate button to get to the customers home.
Easy Peasy! You are paid by direct deposit once a week and will receive a 1099 MISC before tax season starts so be sure to keep track of your mileage.
