Over the past couple of years, food and grocery delivery services from Uber Eats and DoorDash to Amazon Fresh and GrubHub have exploded in popularity.
The pandemic played a big role in growth.
In 2019, just 67 million Americans bought groceries online; by 2024, that number rocketed to 138.3 million. This year, the number is expected to be around 148.4 million, meaning more than half of Americans older than 18 will purchase groceries online, according to Capital One Shopping.
Prior to the pandemic, ship-to-home grocery services dominated, capturing 42% of all online sales, but it accounted for only approximately 18% in March 2025, according to grocery data company Brick Meets Click. Delivery has increased from a 26% share in 2019 to a 43% share today, and Pickup has climbed from 32% to almost 39%.
The trends all add up to great news for the leading grocery delivery service, Instacart.
In 2025 Instacart, officially Maplebear Inc, controls roughly 68% of the third-party U.S. grocery delivery market, according to eMarketer. DoorDash controls around 10%.
Instacart has leveled the playing field for smaller grocers, allowing them to compete with larger chains like Walmart, Amazon and Target. Instacart’s 2023 IPO highlighted the growing importance of these platforms in expanding e-commerce capabilities, offering retailers a wider reach and enhancing their competitive positioning.
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Orders: 83.4 million (+14% YoY)
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Gross Transaction Volume (GTV):$9.17B (+10% YoY)
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Total Revenue:$939M (+10% YoY)
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Transaction Revenue:$670M (+10% YoY)
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Advertising & Other Revenue:$269M (+10% YoY)
Source: Instacart Shareholders Letter
Now, Instacart is being called out for an alarming reason: the company is accused of using algorithmic or dynamic pricing to change food prices.
A sweeping analysis by Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union reviewed more than 250,000 Instacart prices across the country. The groups conducted an independent experiment that involved 437 shoppers in four cities, adding items into their virtual shopping carts.
Groundwork Collaborative and Consumer Reports found:
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74% of items appeared in multiple price tiers at the same time.
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Some items had four or five prices simultaneously.
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Identical baskets could vary by 7% depending on which price variant a shopper received.
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Price differences reached as high as 23% for the exact same item.
For a typical four-person household, those variations could mean up to $1,200 extra per year, simply because of which version of Instacart’s test they were assigned.
Related: Americans warned of new gift-card scam targeting holiday shoppers
“They have turned the simple act of buying groceries into a high-tech game of pricing roulette. When the same box of Wheat Thins can jump 23% in price because of an algorithm, that’s not innovation or convenience, it’s unfair,” Groundwork Collaborative Executive Director Lindsay Owens told Consumer Reports.
“The wealth of data [Instacart collects] has helped Instacart build an automated software program for price optimization — or the science of analyzing customer data to determine exactly how much the company can charge,” according to the Groundwork Collaborative research.
Instacart has said retailers control item pricing and that it doesn’t use personalized pricing. But the report shows different prices for the same product from the same retailer at the same time, which suggests Instacart’s algorithms are playing a significant role.
Instacart also says that its new pricing tools allow retailers and brands to “target offers to custom segments” of customers based on whether they are a new or active customer, a loyal shopper, how close they are to a competing store, their in-store shopping habits, and even the weather.
The company can use demographic data like age, sex, household size, household income, buying behavior, purchasing history, and frequently shopped stores as factors in their experiments.
Related: Costco members voice major shopping complaint
In its Q3 2025 November shareholder letter, Instacart shared that its adjusted EBITDA rose 22% to $278 million.
New CEO Chris Rogers framed Q3 as a “strong quarter” that reinforces the company’s shift from being just a grocery marketplace to becoming a full-stack technology partner for the retail industry.
The company’s overall gains reflect a business that continues to grow profitably even as it experiments with pricing, availability, fulfillment fees, and AI-driven features that directly touch the shopper experience.
Experts warn that these pricing experiments could influence consumer trust. “The varying prices are unfair to consumers and exacerbate a grocery affordability crisis that regular Americans are already struggling to cope with” Owens told the Spokesman Review.
Rogers’ cheerleading aside, shares of Instacart fell after the experimental pricing story broke, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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2012: Instacart was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area, introducing on‑demand grocery delivery via website and mobile app.
Source: Instacart -
2013: Instacart Express Launches, a membership program offering unlimited deliveries for a monthly/annual fee.
Source: Instacart -
2017: Instacart expands into Canada Expansion into Canada
Source: Loblaw Companies Limited -
2018: raises large funding rounds, including a $600M injection, and acquires Toronto‑based grocery platform Unata for $65M as part of scaling its tech/platform offerings.
Source: Forbes -
2020–2021: Amid the pandemic, Instacart’s valuation jumped to around $39 billion after a large funding round, riding huge demand for delivery services.
Source: Contrary Research on valuation growth -
September 2023: Instacart goes public under the ticker CART, raising about $660 million at a roughly $10 billion valuation.
Source: SEC -
May-August 2025: Chris Rogers takes over as CEO.
Source: Instacart -
Dec 2025: Instacart sues New York City over new worker pay and tipping laws, claiming they conflict with federal and state rules, a notable regulatory moment for the company.
Source:: Reuters
Related: Amazon solves Walmart, Target, and Kroger’s shoplifting problem
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Dec 13, 2025, where it first appeared in the Retail section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
