Instacart Expands To Northwest Indiana This Week

NORTHWEST INDIANA — Instacart, one of the nation's largest grocery delivery services, announced this week it will expand into the Northwest Indiana region and be available to more than 315,000 local households beginning on Wednesday, Sept. 20. Shoppers who work for Instacart hand pick and deliver items from local stores and deliver them to homes in as fast as less than an hour. In Northwest Indiana, retailers participating include Strack & Van Til, Costco, CVS, Jewel-Osco and Meijer.

“Over the past year we’ve seen incredible demand in the NW Indiana area,” said Dave Osborne, senior regional director for Instacart. “We work with a variety of local retailers to provide the freshest, highest quality groceries to our customers. Expansion into Northwest Indiana gives us an opportunity to expand service in the Indiana market." (Get Patch real-time email alerts for the latest news for Merrillville — or your neighborhood. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

Customers in Instacart's areas of service (Valparaiso, Dune Acres, Chesterton, Lake Station, New Chicago, Hobart, Hobart Township, Portage, Merrillville, Ogden Dunes, Hammond, Munster, Highland, Whiting, Westhill, Dyer, Griffith, Calumet City, Chicago Heights, South Chicago Heights, South Holland, East Chicago, Burnham, Cedar Lake, Lowell, Crown Point, Schererville, St. John, Rensselaer and Collegeville) can go online to the Instacart website or open the Instacart mobile app on their iPhone or Android device and select their city/store, add items to a virtual cart, then choose a delivery window (within one hour, within two hours, or up to seven days in advance) and check out, according to a news release from Instacart.

An Instacart shopper accepts the order on their smartphone, uses the Instacart shopper app to guide them through shopping and then delivers the order to the customer in a designated delivery time-frame.

The delivery fee for orders of $35 or more is $5.99.

First time users can enter the code HELLOINDIANA at checkout to get $20 off an order of $35 or more, plus a free first time delivery. This promotion expires on Dec. 1.

Strack & Van Til, one of the local retailers participating in the Instacart expansion to the region, previously launched a pilot program for curbside pickup in the region. Jeff Strack, CEO and president of the NWI-based grocery chain, praised his company's current partnership with Instacart.

"Strack & Van Til was founded on the belief that we should work hard to make sure our customers are completely satisfied and we love finding new ways to do just that," Strack said. "Partnering with Instacart to offer the convenience of same-day grocery delivery is right in line with our goal to make our customers lives easier through feeding them."