Key Takeaways:
- Instacart is positioning enterprise technology, its Storefront Pro platform, as its biggest growth opportunity, with more than 380 grocers now using it and retailers seeing a 10-percentage point sales lift after switching.
- Chief Commercial Officer Ryan Hamburger says trust, built through accurate substitutions and reliable fulfillment, remains the strongest predictor of customer loyalty in digital grocery.
- The company reported its first billion-dollar quarter this year, with total revenue reaching $1.019 billion alongside $10 billion in gross transaction value in the same period.
Instacart is best known as a marketplace where consumers order groceries for delivery. Increasingly, though, the company is positioning itself as something else entirely: a technology vendor that grocers hire to run their own digital operations.
That shift is centered on Storefront Pro, a platform that lets retailers power their own first-party websites and apps using Instacart’s underlying technology. More than 380 grocers are already using it, and Ryan Hamburger, Chief Commercial Officer at Instacart, said on the Retail Remix podcast that it represents the company’s biggest growth opportunity over the next several years.
When it comes to marketplace, advertising, enterprise technology or AI, all have an upside, Hamburger said, but enterprise technology could have the most opportunity. Grocery, he noted, was among the last retail categories to fully digitize, and many retailers have historically underinvested in digital infrastructure, leaving them to compete with players who have been building those capabilities for years.
That’s the gap Instacart is chasing with Storefront Pro. The company has offered enterprise tools for six to seven years, according to Hamburger, but has doubled down on Storefront Pro specifically over the last few, positioning it as an alternative to retailers building their digital infrastructure from scratch.
The pitch, as Hamburger describes it, comes down to buy versus build. Building comparable systems in-house can take years and tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, plus an ongoing team to keep pace with innovation. Storefront Pro, by contrast, gives retailers access to technology Instacart has already built, with most retailers going from start to launch in a matter of months.
The results, according to Hamburger, show up quickly. Retailers that switch to Storefront Pro typically see a 10-percentage point lift in sales right out of the gate, without making any other changes. Retailers that adopt the platform have also seen a five-percentage point lift in 90-day user retention compared with their prior systems.
“Proof is in the pudding,” he said.
What Builds Trust with Grocery Shoppers
Ask Hamburger what determines whether an Instacart customer sticks around, and the answer has nothing to do with pricing or convenience. It comes down to whether the order is right.
“The biggest predictor of loyalty is really whether or not the customer believes we’re going to get their order right,” Hamburger said, pointing to accurate substitutions, reliable inventory signals and on-time delivery as the deciding factors.
Hamburger described grocery shopping as an unusually emotional category of ecommerce. Customers are not just buying items, they are trusting a stranger to make judgment calls on their behalf, and the margin for error is thin.
“Food is personal, and a bad substitution can really break trust in a way that is genuinely hard to repair,” Hamburger said.
That philosophy shapes some of Instacart’s more granular features. A second store check sends a shopper to an additional location if a specific item, say, the steak that is the centerpiece of dinner, is not available at the first store. A preference picker lets customers specify details as particular as whether they want ripe or green bananas, then stores that preference for future orders.
Hamburger said Instacart’s history of more than 1.6 billion orders gives the company powerful data on what customers tend to buy and what substitutions they will typically accept. But he distinguished aggregate data from personal nuance, noting that an individual customer’s specific substitution preference gets remembered and applied the next time that scenario comes up.
Getting a customer’s first few orders right matters disproportionately, according to Hamburger, since that early experience determines whether someone becomes a habitual user or an occasional one.
“That’s what creates the habit,” he said, adding that Instacart prioritizes sending highly rated shoppers for a customer’s earliest orders and gives shoppers incentive to complete second store checks when needed.
Who Actually Uses Instacart
Hamburger pushed back on the assumption that Instacart skews toward a premium or younger demographic. He said the platform’s customer base closely mirrors the broader population across the U.S. and Canada in terms of age and household income.
Power users are not defined by order frequency alone but by reliance. He described them as people managing a household’s full workload, balancing jobs, kids’ activities and everyday logistics, who lean on Instacart because they trust it to select groceries as well as, or better than, they would themselves.
Hamburger pointed to four use cases that shape how people shop on the platform: the full weekly shop, bulk stock-up trips, convenience top-ups and special occasion orders. Each demands a different strength, whether speed, assortment or communication, but all ultimately hinge on the same trust equation.
AI on Both Sides of the Register
Hamburger broke Instacart’s AI strategy into two applications, one facing the customer, one facing the retailer, both aimed at reinforcing reliability rather than replacing it.
On the customer side, Instacart’s AI shopping assistants are now live for the majority of users, allowing shoppers to type plain-language prompts, such as finding gluten-free dinner ideas for a family of four, and move from idea to checkout in minutes.
On the retailer side, a tool called Store View uses computer vision to give store managers real-time shelf visibility multiple times a day without manual checks. Hamburger called out-of-stocks one of the biggest sources of customer frustration in grocery, whether shopping online or in person, making shelf accuracy a direct extension of the same trust-building effort.
“(AI) is all about the data that underpins it,” Hamburger said, adding that connecting that digital intelligence to what is actually happening inside stores is what will ultimately drive results for retailers.
The Business Behind the Billion-Dollar Quarter
That combination, enterprise technology and marketplace trust, underpins the milestone Instacart hit this year, when the company reported its first billion-dollar quarter, with total revenue of $1.019 billion alongside $10 billion in gross transaction value in the same period.
Customer behavior was one signal behind the growth. Instacart’s average order value now sits at $113, a figure Hamburger said reflects a deeper shift in usage.
“People are trusting Instacart with their full weekly shop,” he said, rather than reserving the app for smaller convenience or top-up orders.
Advertising also contributed. Instacart’s ads revenue grew 16% year over year, the fastest pace in more than two years, with more than 9,000 brands now advertising on the platform. Hamburger credited part of that growth to Instacart’s use of first-party grocery data to power campaigns on platforms including Meta, TikTok and Pinterest.
Asked how Instacart scales advertising without compromising the customer experience, Hamburger argued the two reinforce each other when done correctly.
“The better the shopping experience, the more customers will trust our platform, and thus the more valuable it becomes for our brand partners,” he said.
What’s Next for Digital Grocery
Looking ahead, Hamburger outlined three priorities for retailers: treating physical and digital experiences as one connected system rather than separate businesses, embedding AI into core systems rather than treating it as an add-on, and continuing to invest in physical stores, which he said still account for the vast majority of grocery sales.
You can listen to the full episode here:
