Costco: Instacart vs instore pricing.

[babylonman]

My wife loaded an instacart suite of goods and it sounded overly expensive. I went to the store to pickup the same items and found these price deltas.

$226.19 : Instore total
$304.99 : Instacart total

~35% : real cost to use instacart
$78.80 : real cost to use instacart

Receipts attached. Instacart total does not include Romano cheese which was purchased in store and contains only similar ice cream bars and TP since all weren't available online.

[LostGirl]

Wow, just wow! I reviewed some pricing against instacart prices when it came out in our area and found the same generally but never did a full side by side comparison. Thanks for the reminder on the true cost of this convenience (that we don't use but I'm often tempted.)

[Cromacster]

Not sure how common they are, but I have found a few mispriced items on instacart.  I found wild caught tuna for 1.99/lb.  I believe it should have been 11.99 or 21.99/lb, but I bought 5 lbs (should have bought much more).  Zevia 6 pack's were listed for the price of a can.  I bought 48 cans for 8$ or so. 

[Helvegen]

Yeah, I noticed the insane markup too when I browsed through it. Not worth it. I wish they had a pickup service like Walmart though. That would be great.

[LostGirl]

Yeah, I noticed the insane markup too when I browsed through it. Not worth it. I wish they had a pickup service like Walmart though. That would be great.

Whole foods has a pickup service and Costco does Google Express delivery as well but that doesn't include refrig items.

[SimpleCycle]

Yeah, it's not just Costco.  I did a similar comparison of Instacart to in-store at our local grocery store and came out around a 30% premium.

[Helvegen]

Yeah, I noticed the insane markup too when I browsed through it. Not worth it. I wish they had a pickup service like Walmart though. That would be great.

Whole foods has a pickup service and Costco does Google Express delivery as well but that doesn't include refrig items.

That's the whole point to me, I want the perishables (among other things) from Costco at the curb. I drive by it every day to and from work, so nbd to stop by as opposed to home delivery. I don't have a WF near me and don't see any real reason to go out of my way to shop there.

[tj]

Instacart needs to pay the driver and profit. it's not a surprise.


I also don't know why you'd order Costco TP from Instacart when you can just order that from Costco's website.