Toronto is now one click away from getting all of our grocery shopping done while waiting in line for that morning coffee. InstaBuggy, Canadian version of Instacart, promises to deliver everything you’d ever buy at a local grocery store to your door within an hour.
“Instead of going to the store, standing in line, and spending all that time on grocery shopping, InstaBuggy offers a convenient portal for people to browse and place their order,” said Julian Gleizer, InstaBuggy co-founder and CEO. “With InstaBuggy, there will be a number of stores to shop from. You’ll come to InstaBuggy and enter your postal code to get the grocery stores in your area, choose your store, place an order, and get your groceries within an hour at your doorstep.
“You can purchase absolutely anything you’d typically find in a grocery store – your dairy, shampoo, household items, ice cream and paper towels,” Gleizer continued. “It’s exactly like Instacart, but we’re the first in Canada to provide this service.”
InstaBuggy aims to build an online grocery chain portal without owning a single grocery store, using the existing network of grocery stores to effectively warehouse inventory. The delivery prices sit at a reasonable range from $9.99 to free, and all the products come from local grocery stores. InstaBuggy has launched downtown Toronto delivery along with some parts of the GTA, and you can sign up with your postal code to let them know where you want to see InstaBuggy next. The startup picked downtown Toronto for its high density, and plans to scale across the country shortly after, eventually moving into the US.
The team bringing InstaBuggy to downtown Toronto got solid experience in digital, e-commerce, and the food industry, and an impressive advisory board, including ex-senior VP of Loblaws, and managing equity partners from KPMG.
“In addition to the crowdsourcing model with shoppers bringing groceries to customers, we have our own in-store pickers and packers, who pack the order, and we have our own drivers and vehicles to control delivery,” Gleizer told BetaKit. Much of the company’s future will depend on the quality of the customer experience. It’s good to hear InstaBuggy promise its employees fulfilling the orders will get a good hourly pay above minimum wage. Gleizer said the employees would get treated in exactly the same way the company treats its customers.
InstaBuggy plans to be continually hiring as demand increases to fulfill all the orders. Those of us lucky to live or work in the downtown core can now be browsing for some rainbow ice cream from the comforts of our office.