Job - personal shopper

[Night Elf]

Does anyone work for a company like InstaCart or Shipt? What can you tell me about them?

[jen3kids]

I did shopping for InstaCart for 5 months or so.  It was easy - at a local grocery store that I knew the layout of pretty well.  The people I worked with were great and because I was a 'fast' shopper I could get as many hours as I wanted.  You get ranked on your speed and the higher your rank, the more orders you'd get, and your ranking went even higher.  If you are a slow walker who likes to wander and peruse, then it isn't the job for you.   I never did the delivery aspect of InstaCart.    

Do you have any specific questions?  

Edited February 17, 2020 by jen3kids

[Night Elf]

5 hours ago, jen3kids said:

I did shopping for InstaCart for 5 months or so.  It was easy - at a local grocery store that I knew the layout of pretty well.  The people I worked with were great and because I was a 'fast' shopper I could get as many hours as I wanted.  You get ranked on your speed and the higher your rank, the more orders you'd get, and your ranking went even higher.  If you are a slow walker who likes to wander and peruse, then it isn't the job for you.   I never did the delivery aspect of InstaCart.    

Do you have any specific questions?  

I'm trying to help my son find a job. He's 23 and has Aspergers. He used to work for a grocery store so he knows how to find things so he'd have no problem with that. The only concern I have is delivering the groceries to someone's house. He'll need to use a GPS app and he's never used one before. 

I figured this would be a good job because he can set his own hours. So explain to me how instacart works. I thought one person accepted the order, went and did the shopping, then delivered it to the customer's house. 

[jen3kids]

4 minutes ago, Night Elf said:

I'm trying to help my son find a job. He's 23 and has Aspergers. He used to work for a grocery store so he knows how to find things so he'd have no problem with that. The only concern I have is delivering the groceries to someone's house. He'll need to use a GPS app and he's never used one before. 

I figured this would be a good job because he can set his own hours. So explain to me how instacart works. I thought one person accepted the order, went and did the shopping, then delivered it to the customer's house. 

 

It depends on the area.  

In my area, the shopper and delivery person are 2 different people.  The people who did both didn't work for InstaCart (they may have worked for Shipt), but InstaCart does allow you to do both in some areas - you would have the check the policies of the stores in your area.    The people who did both shopped at a bunch of different stores - grocery stores as well as pharmacies like CVS.

[KatieJ]

My daughter shops for Insta cart, but only shops. No delivery. She only shops at her assigned store and has hours , but it it’s pretty flexible. 

a friend shops and delivers for  Shipt at Meijer stores. She does all the shopping and  the delivery.  She gets messages on her phone when they have orders. I am not sure if she does any scheduled hours or if thst is how they work. Interesting is she can shop wherever they offer shipt. So if she is visiting family in another state, she can do shipt shopping there too. 

[WendyLady]

One big thing to remember is that most of these delivery services consider their workers to be self employed, or independent contractors. They don’t withhold taxes and it is very very sad at tax time to see that you owe a lot of taxes. (Federal/state income tax plus self employment tax). He will want to set aside (or send in quarterly estimates) of about 20% of his earnings. He will also want to keep a log of mileage (there are some good apps for this) and keep track of all expenses....

Edited February 18, 2020 by WendyLady

[Pippen]

Also check into your car insurance. Most regular policies won't cover accidents that occur if the vehicle is being used for work purposes. It's a dirty little secret that the fast food places don't tell perspective employees: they aren't covered on their own policies and the business doesn't cover them either. 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Pippen

[Laura Corin]

FWIW, my brother, who has Asperger's, was happiest in a telephone customer service job.  He had a script to work from and the requirements of the job were quite clear.  Most of the other people on the team (local government) were middle-aged women, and he found it an easy environment because he wasn't expected to fit in particularly.  He was in his twenties at the time.

[ktgrok]

ooh, I didn't know you could just shop for some of these! i'd be good at that! I might actually be interested in doing that a few hours a week - anyone know if you hav etc do a minimum number of hours? I actually like grocery shopping when I idon't have kids with me, but I wouldn't like delivering nearly as much. 

[Rachel]

18 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

ooh, I didn't know you could just shop for some of these! i'd be good at that! I might actually be interested in doing that a few hours a week - anyone know if you hav etc do a minimum number of hours? I actually like grocery shopping when I idon't have kids with me, but I wouldn't like delivering nearly as much. 

At my local Kroger the click list people just do the shopping. There are shopping people and then people who take groceries to the car.

[jen3kids]

50 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

ooh, I didn't know you could just shop for some of these! i'd be good at that! I might actually be interested in doing that a few hours a week - anyone know if you hav etc do a minimum number of hours? I actually like grocery shopping when I idon't have kids with me, but I wouldn't like delivering nearly as much. 

 

I don't believe InstaCart has minimum hours, but you do have to be able to work 2 Sundays/month.  At least that's true in my area; I'm not sure if it's nationwide or not.   The more hours you are available, the easier it is to get hours.  I know that sounds kind of obvious, but the schedulers look at how fast you shop and your availability.  If you are slow and only available 6-9 on 2 specific days, you aren't likely to get any shifts.  However, if you are slow, but are available anytime between 8am and 4pm everyday, you will get more hours and be able to improve your shopping times.  Once you have increased your speed, you can be more selective with your times.

[Night Elf]

He's thinking about his last resort job, stocking at Kroger which is what he did in 2017. He didn't want to go back and do that but with all the research we've done at other retail stores, he is realizing Kroger might be his best job. He's just so picky. I haven't talked to him about Instacart and Shipt yet. I was waiting to read some of the posts in this thread to get an idea of what to expect.

At our Kroger, I see Click List shoppers going around the store. I've never seen anyone in any store wearing an Instacart tshirt. My dd is an Instacart customer so obviously they are around. 

If he doesn't like this idea, I'm going to ask him to go ahead and reapply at Kroger.