Instacart launched a full suite of business features across its white-label e-commerce solutions Storefront and Storefront Pro. These features have been available on Instacart App for Business customers, but now they are bringing them to their white label solution.
If you're unfamiliar with the difference between Instacart's app and white label solutions:
- Instacart App and Instacart.com are its consumer-facing marketplace model — where shoppers browse from multiple retailers in one place, and Instacart handles the shopping experience, payment, and delivery, while retailers pay a commission on each sale.
- Instacart Storefront & Storefront Pro are a white label solution where the e-commerce sites look and feel like the retailer's own store, but Instacart is actually providing the backend infrastructure like catalog management, fulfillment, delivery logistics, and checkout, while branding, domain, and customer relationship belong to the retailer. For example, customers shop directly on kroger.com or wegmans.com, which are powered by Instacart Storefront.
New features brought to Storefront include:
- Bulk Ordering – businesses can order by the case instead of just by individual units
- Multi-user Management – now with customizable permissions for roles like admins, buyers, and approvers
- Account Oversight – a customer-facing dashboard that helps businesses manage order activity and spend
- Shopping Guides – to make it easier for team members to find frequently ordered or recommended items
- Controls and Reconciliation – business managers can set spend limits, approve order workflows, and export bulk receipts for recordkeeping
- Instacart+ Sharing benefits – businesses can share their Instacart+ subscription across team members and earn 2% cash back on orders over $250 placed with Instacart+ benefits applied
It's always been interesting to me how Instacart has balanced playing both the roles of Shopify (underlying tech) and Amazon (marketplace) for grocery stores. However they seem to be doing a pretty good job. It makes you wonder if Amazon gave up on its D2C efforts too quickly back in the day. Remember when they acquired and shuttered Selz within a year and a half?