Home Depot’s Instacart delivery partnership is nationwide

Home Depot and Instacart’s growing partnership will continue to expand the delivery app’s offerings beyond broccoli, baby food and frozen supermarket pizza. Customers using the app may see more nails, floor tiles and electric saws in the future.

Home Depot announced an expansion of its existing pilot program, moving to a nationwide partnership with Instacart. This will allow it to offer same-day delivery in as little as one hour from nearly 2,000 store locations. Now Home Depot customers can visit Instacart online and order almost anything they sell there, whether it’s an extension cord or a bag of mulch. The delivery will then be handled by Instacart’s nationwide group of delivery drivers.

Home Depot is ranked No. 4 in Digital Commerce 360’s Top 1000 database of the largest online retailers in North America. It is also a leading retailer in the Top 1000 Hardware and Upgrades category.

Home Depot Instacart Pilot Expansion

“The feedback from our customers has been positive and we are excited to roll out this program nationwide,” said George Lane, a spokesman for Home Depot, who spoke to Digital Commerce 360.

Home Depot is joining rival Lowes in allowing customers to have products delivered to their doors. Lowes merchandise is delivered via DoorDash. Home furnishing chains are joining numerous retailers in starting cooperation with a company that initially dealt in food delivery. For example, Kohl’s offers Instacart products. As do Best Buy, Costco, Target, Walgreens and Walmart, among others.

The service also includes Instacart’s “Big & Bulky Fulfillment Solution,” which provides same-day delivery of heavier items up to 60 pounds. This gives Home Depot pro-shoppers another option when ordering oversized or heavier items crucial to their trade. According to industry observers, the Instacart and Home Depot partnership may be significant, especially in the pro-customer segment.

The Importance of Delivery to Home Depot

“The ability for a chain like Home Depot to consistently provide one-hour delivery of moderately heavy items could be a real game changer for many – even most – contractors,” says Jim McClellan, partner and co-founder of FORT Systems. The software company provides fulfillment and warehouse management systems and works with major carriers such as UPS and FedEx.

McClellan said having larger, bulkier items will help contractors achieve efficiency in many areas.

“Of course, this would make some of the logistical planning easier for contractors and potentially even lower costs for clients because contractors wouldn’t have to leave the job site as often to pick up needed items,” McClellan says.

But he also says Home Depot benefits from the partnership by essentially creating a new B2B channel.

“This could create new revenue opportunities in a segment that more closely resembles the wholesale/shipping channel,” McClellan says. “A key factor for Home Depot would be the allocation of resources to such a channel, as maintaining a high level of success in such a short delivery time requires a high level of maintenance and planning.”

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