As I remember, Instacart's main business was Whole Foods delivery. When Amazon bought Whole Foods they obviously lost that market, but there was some optimism

As I remember, Instacart's main business was Whole Foods delivery. When Amazon bought Whole Foods they obviously lost that market, but there was some optimism presented because now suddenly every store has to compete with Amazon and would look to Instacart as a ready-made provider of this service. But I am not so sure this will work out. Instacart builds some of their fees into item prices. If you're shopping at Whole Foods you're already signaling some price insensitivity, and you likely won't notice a few nickels added to these already premium items. However if you shop at somewhere like Safeway, this may not work. The price competition is way more intense and consumers are much more sensitive to the price of essentials. Maybe the idea is that anyone who orders groceries from a hip mobile app like Instacart is someone who can afford the convenience premium? I am just not convinced that they can really ever recover from Amazon here. Plus these other chains may want to do business with Instacart today, but in the long term they'll probably invest in their own delivery services and cut out the middle man. Instacart is a pretty legit business, but $4.2B is a lot for a middleman in an industry that is synonymous with low margins.