Market Hit: Leveraging CE Data to Understand the Differences between Instacart, Grocery Delivery Services, and Online Grocery Trends

Grocery delivery service Instacart (CART) recently reported interesting growth both around increasing customer transaction amount and overall revenue growth. They reported gross transaction value (GTV) growth of +5.8%, very close to CE Implied Reported Growth of +5.9%, while beating revenue consensus by over 4% (reported revenue growth +14.4% versus consensus of +10.3%).  

Instacart Market Share vs. Grocery Delivery and Online Grocery

Looking at the data on a broader level, we can compare Instacart versus the grocery delivery and the online grocery (ex: delivery services) subindustries. CART management noted that Instacart represents 85% of the grocery market, matching what CE data shows for the last several quarters after dropping from its peak share of 87% in Q4 of 2022. Shifting to Instacart performance for the last four quarters, we can see that along with the broader grocery delivery services subindustry, it has underperformed versus the online grocery (owned channels) subindustry.

*Market share as percentage of grocery delivery service subindustry

This indicates that shoppers may have been wary of using grocery delivery services during an inflationary period, though CART’s management noted that it expects order growth as inflation begins to wane.

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About the Authors

Michael Gunther is the VP Head of Insights for the CEIC. Explore more of his insights here and follow him on LinkedIn.

Harsh Masher is an Insights Analyst for the CEIC. Explore more insights here.