NEW YORK CITY, NY - After a five-year-long partnership, grocery delivery service Instacart and Whole Foods Market are calling it quits. While grocery retail partnerships are often fickle, the split will, unfortunately, lead to upwards of 237 job cuts, according to Crain’s New York Business. Instacart and Whole Foods will officially terminate their partnership on May 15, 2019.
“Whole Foods Market has been a partner of ours since 2014, but our relationship is now beginning to wind down,” Apoorva Mehta, Instacart’s CEO, wrote in a Medium post back in December. “The first phase of this transition starts today, which means that we have to start scaling back our in-store shopper operations within Whole Foods locations. Today, we have 1,415 in-store shoppers across 76 Whole Foods locations. Out of this community of in-store shoppers at Whole Foods, 243 will be impacted beginning February 10, 2019. In the months that follow, we expect to ramp down all remaining Whole Foods in-store shopping operations in preparation for Whole Foods to fully exit our marketplace in the coming months.”
The Inquirer reported on the job cuts earlier this month after notices were filed with state officials. At the time, the number of laid-off workers was only 56 workers in Philadelphia, which included 24 layoffs at the location at 929 South St.; 20 layoffs at the location at 2101 Pennsylvania Ave.; and 12 layoffs at the location at 15 E. Wynnewood Rd. Crain’s New York Business reported that an additional 44 Instacart shoppers will be laid off from the location on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, by May.
“We expect to be able to place more than 75% of all our impacted in-store Whole Foods shoppers in new in-store shopper jobs at another retailer in their area. For our remaining impacted shoppers, we are committed to doing everything we can to support you. We want to find the best possible option for you, and we’re available to discuss other potential roles either within or outside of Instacart,” continued Apoorva in the Medium post.
While Whole Foods was one of Instacart’s more flashy partners thanks to its Amazon backing, Instacart also works with Costco, Aldi, Shoprite, and Kroger, to name a few.
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