Want Free Grocery Delivery? You Can Bypass Instacart’s Fee If You Do This [CNET]

A shakeup to the grocery delivery service’s pricing structure will help you save money, gas and time.

Instacart and other grocery delivery services offer convenience, but most, especially on-demand delivery operations, get knocked for excessive fees, bloated prices when you shop in-app, or the membership costs. 

Good news for those of you who’ve never dabbled in grocery delivery because of the annoying up-charges: Instacart just rolled out new initiatives to pass much-needed savings along to customers. The best of which includes waiving the $8 delivery fee for people who schedule their delivery at least 24 hours in advance. 

If you’ve never tried Instacart, now might be the best time to check out whether the service could regularly or even occasionally work for you.

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Save $8 on delivery fee by planning ahead

In addition to the slightly inflated grocery store prices you incur by shopping through the Instacart service, the add-on fees beyond the cost of goods are what can make Instacart feel more like a luxury than a convenience, and may be the barrier to entry for some shoppers. 

To start, a minimum $8 delivery fee is applied to each order — more if you want it in a bigger hurry. A variable “service fee” is tacked on to each order to support the Instacart platform, depending on your order and location, and a delivery driver tip is calculated based on a percentage of the cost of the items you purchase. (You can select the tip percentage, but this is not the place to save yourself some money by disregarding the fact that someone is delivering for you and is tipped as part of their compensation.) 

Depending on the size of your order, these are the bits that can make your typical Instacart grocery shop feel overly inflated. A $60 grocery shop can easily become $80 or more. In that example, if you can handle the idea of basically paying someone $20 to shop for you, then you can understand the appeal.

Read more: Is Trader Joe’s Really Cheaper Than Other Grocery Stores? We Did the Math

The biggest and most obvious savings with Instacart’s new initiative, then, is the elimination of the $8 delivery fee if you’re simply willing to plan for delivery the following day and within a three-hour window. In many stores, you can even place the order before bed for delivery first thing in the morning after your shop opens. 

Normally, delivery by Instacart is designed to happen on the same day as you place an order, typically within a couple of hours depending on the size of the order, for the normal $8 delivery fee. A “Priority” option tacks on a few additional dollars beyond that if you want to get it in the next hour or so, and make sure your shopper/driver is dropping off your order first. The fee drops to a modest $3 if you’re able to pick a delivery window later on the same day.

Although $8 may feel like a drop in the bucket depending on how much you’re spending to have groceries delivered, consider that the average Instacart order in 2023, according to statistics published by the brand, was only $35.64. This amounts to savings of almost 20% if you’re willing to think a little bit ahead. 

Add your loyalty club memberships for additional savings

Instacart now allows you to connect your loyalty card from various retailers for additional savings. Major outlets such as Albertsons, Costco, Food Lion, Kroger and Wegmans, among others, participate in the platform, and your loyalty card may be added once you click on the particular store to begin shopping, or at checkout, by providing the email, phone or account number linked with your loyalty club membership.

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The kinds of savings you would see in-store available to club members are also available to club members shopping through Instacart. Prices are still inflated for the Instacart service, but similar sales are nonetheless offered for online shoppers. By adding my Wegmans Shoppers Club membership, for example, various sales promotions appeared in the online store of the type you’d see in store: “Buy one, get one…” “spend $X on eligible items, save $X,” etc. 

Plus, your Instacart purchases also contribute to whatever loyalty rewards your particular membership affords you. Stores such as CVS that offer cash back to their members can add up if you’re not limited to earning those points while in-store only.

Shop your personal digital flyer for savings

When a Lidl opened in my neighborhood, I collected all of the promotional circulars that had been dropped off in my apartment lobby that hadn’t been collected by neighbors and proceeded to score something like $100 in free groceries over the following week. If you’re also that kind of shopper, the new “Flyers” Instacart feature will appeal.

There’s an easier way to find sale items at a given store on Instacart all in one place or to be able to find savings regardless of whether you have a club membership. Grocery retailers don’t only offer sales and savings to their members. We’ve all been recipients of the aforementioned weekly circulars that you may find in your mailbox, on your stoop, or in your physical shopping cart that outline weekly in-store deals that are available for all shoppers. 

Instacart now offers the digital version of these flyers, located in an icon called “Flers” on your app’s home screen, making it easier to find useful savings. Stores you frequently shop or that carry the products you usually buy will appear as available flyers, or you can search among all available flyers for something different.

After selecting a store, you can browse several tabs for savings: “For you” is based on items you’ve purchased in the past, (the app gets wiser to your preferences the more you use it) and “Top savings” shows you what the best deals are for that week. Otherwise, you can shop the sale items by department, just as you might be looking out for brightly colored sale price tags if you were pushing an actual cart down an actual aisle. The expiration date for the available savings is also helpfully located in the app, just as you’d see in-store so you don’t lose out on taking advantage.

The best part about the Flyers feature is that you can see what the savings are for sale items compared to the original Instacart price — a boon to those who are prone to shopping off-list who are moved by buying items just because they are on sale. 

What is Instacart and how does it work?

Founded in 2012, Instacart is an app that partners with national and local brick-and-mortar retailers to allow you to buy groceries without leaving the house. You shop the digital store, and once your order is placed, a human shopper assembles your order and delivers your groceries to you, typically within a couple of hours of placing the order — hence the “Insta” in the brand name. 

My first experience with Instacart was following back surgery when I was saddled with a recovery order to do no lifting for six weeks. Rather than prevailing upon friends for the semiweekly grocery shops that are required for limited-storage NYC kitchens, I chose to maintain positive friendships and have an Instacart shopper do it for me. I’ve used it several times a year ever since, especially following travel, while sick or even just when workloads get overwhelming. Occasionally during inclement weather.

Instacart’s primary drawback is its inflated expense. In addition to several fees that are tacked on to your grocery order (outlined below), the prices themselves are slightly higher than what you’d see in the physical market, as a means of supporting the service. I have found Instacart to be worthwhile anyway, but I was especially thrilled to see these new additions to the service that can help where it most counts: with the receipt.