How much extra does Instacart delivery cost versus Kroger pickup?

With all the coronavirus stuff, I’ve started to use Instacart more to shop at my local grocery store Marianos which is owned and run by Kroger.

With my latest cart, I was curious how much Instacart was charging versus the store. There’s a little vague note that I’m getting the Everyday Store Price, but I’m not sure what that actually means in practice. Instacart defines it as:

Standard store pricing. Loyalty cards not accepted. Most in-store sales, promotions, offers, coupons and discounts do not apply. Instacart specific coupons, promotions and discounts available. Price as displayed. 

So let’s get started, this is what my final Instacart receipt looked like with Everyday Store Pricing. $201.65 on products and tax, and then the remainder $44.26 on service, tip, and delivery fees.

Compare this to my Kroger pick up total of $194.45 for products and taxes. I added every single thing–including replacements–from my finalized Instacart order to the Kroger Clicklist order. Kroger pickup will give you the sale prices which is the cause of the difference between the Kroger subtotal and the Instacart subtotal. Because of this, I missed out on some BOGO bread, which I’m a little sad about now that I know about it.

There’s something odd about the tax total that I don’t understand how the Instacart value has lower taxes with a higher subtotal compared to the Kroger tax total on a lower subtotal. I’d imagine that there’s probably something wrong going on with Instacart’s algorithm that they’ll get in trouble over in the future.

So because Instacart charges about $10 more for the same products, I am in essence paying an even bigger premium for the grocery delivery than I originally expected.

In total adding up everything I basically paid $51.46 or a premium of almost 20% for someone else to deliver for me. versus if I had a Kroger employee shop for me and I picked up. Granted I could have shorted the tip a little bit (from 15%), but that seemed rude to short change some when I personally didn’t want to risk getting infected by going shopping myself. But you know, there’s definitely a lot of cost savings to be had if you’re willing to do the pick up.

Edit 4/26: We just got an Instacart from Aldi, and the shopper left the receipt. The total from Aldi was $188 with tax, and Instacart charged $207 for the products + tax, so the hidden Instacart price inflation ray was about 10%.