Instacart gets Red Bull and Doritos to pay your delivery fees

Bloomberg

Online shoppers hate paying delivery fees. So Instacart Inc. is getting Pepsi to foot the bill.
The grocery delivery start-up is working with General Mills Inc., Nestlé SA, PepsiCo Inc., Unilever NV, and other consumer goods makers to cover the cost of delivery or provide other discounts when customers buy their products. In addition to the coupons, the companies pay Instacart to advertise on its website. Since introducing the program about six months ago, it now accounts for 15 percent of Instacart’s revenue, said Apoorva Mehta, the company’s chief executive officer.
Shoppers can find discounts when filling up their carts with brands such as Degree, Doritos, DiGiorno, Häagen-Dazs, Quaker Oats, and Stella Artois. Instacart ads promise free delivery if you spend $10 on Red Bull, or consumers can get 75 cents off any Dove soap. Mehta compares the ads to those offered on the side of Google search results. “It’s like AdWords for groceries,” he said.
In its quest to build a profitable business, Instacart is searching for new sources of revenue that won’t turn off shoppers. The company, which was valued at $2 billion by investors last year, had previously made up some of its costs by selling products for more than what the grocery stores charged. Customers complained, and Instacart backtracked. The company recently cut pay for some workers, according to reports this week in Quartz and Re/code. Instacart said it costs much more to deliver an order than the $5.99 it charges shoppers, but customers are unwilling to pay more.
“People resist paying for delivery because in their minds, it’s something they previously paid $0 for when they picked up their own groceries,” said Nir Eyal, an author who studies how people form habits around technology and teaches at schools such as Stanford University. “Of course, that’s silly because time also has value, but people don’t see it that way.”
This fact isn’t lost on other e-commerce companies. Amazon.com Inc. lures repeat customers to its $99-a-year Prime membership with fast, free delivery. Its upstart rival, Jet.com Inc., encourages shoppers to order in bulk to receive discounts in exchange for reducing the company’s delivery expenses. Postmates, a startup that typically charges as much as $10 for delivery from restaurants, reduces that cost to $2.99 or $3.99 when a restaurant pays the company a commission of 15 percent to 20 percent on the order.