Instacart’s goal is to streamline deliveries for its employees

Brief description of the dive:

• Instacart announced on Thursday several updates to improve the delivery process.
• Delivery workers can now leave eligible orders at customers’ doors if customers don’t show up to pick up their orders. Previously, employees were instructed to bring orders back to the store.
• Other new tools include scanning functionality to confirm batches of multiple orders and informing employees of the presence of pets in homes.

Diving Insights:

As competition grows among third-party delivery providers for grocery partners, Instacart is rolling out features to its delivery partners that it says will make their jobs “easier, safer and more efficient.”

With the new pickup feature, workers who don’t hear back from a customer within 10 minutes about accepting a delivery will be asked to leave the order and take a photo of where they put it. Instacart said it will notify the customer about the pickup and provide them with a photo and time stamp.

Meanwhile, a new in-app scanning feature is designed to reduce the risk of mix-ups when confirming batches of multiple orders, Instacart said. In the future, some orders may require workers to scan a specific item in that order before finalizing the delivery to ensure greater accuracy.

Instacart also said it informs workers if there are pets in a customer’s home and notifies customers to secure their pets before their delivery arrives. The company said that knowing whether pets are at the delivery address is “one of the most important pieces of feedback we hear” from workers.

Instacart said the updates will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

The updates come as Instacart faces continued competition from rivals like DoorDash and Uber for grocery partners and workers. Lately, DoorDash Expands Alcohol Delivery more grocery shopping partners, and Uber unveiled a new feature that allows you to add caregivers to the Uber app so they can book rides and purchase medical supplies, groceries and over-the-counter products.

Instacart reported good results for the first quarter in Mayrecording a significant increase compared to the previous year in total revenues, number of orders and gross transaction volume.