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Instacart wants to sell enterprise software to grocery stores

The company announced today that it wouldn't just be relying on the gig worker model anymore. Now, all grocery stores can now use its software product for managing fulfillment, ecommerce, ads and other digital needs.

Instacart platform

Instacart is moving beyond just its traditional gig model and is now offering new software services to grocery stores.

Image: Courtesy of Instacart

Instacart will now start offering software services to all grocery stores, moving beyond the company's primary focus on food delivery through gig work.

The Instacart Platform will offer software management services for ecommerce, fulfillment, ads, insights and other data for any grocery store, not just those that partner with Instacart for delivery services. Fidji Simo, the company's CEO, said in a press release that the new software platform is based on insights the company has gathered through partnering with grocers on delivery and building custom digital stores.

Gig work companies have generally struggled to make profits since their inception, and delivery companies specifically have landed in an increasingly tight race to improve delivery speeds in cities, oftentimes as low as fifteen minutes. Offering a new SaaS model could create room for more profits for Instacart and increase investor confidence ahead of a potential IPO later this year.

"At Instacart, we’re focusing on the tech," Simo wrote at the end of her statement. The company recently acquired SaaS company Foodstorm.

Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

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