Instacart is cheaper than Amazon for Whole Foods delivery

Instacart’s annual Express
membership now costs $99.

Facebook/Instacart

• Instacart is
  quietly slashing its prices. The company has cut its annual
  Instacart Express membership fee from $149 to $99. Non-Express
  delivery charges have been slashed from $5.99 to
  $3.99.
• It has also
  removed the 5% service fee for its Express members, a
  charge that caused much controversy among customers in the
  past. 
• Instacart is now a more affordable delivery option than
  Amazon when
  it comes to shopping at Whole
  Foods. 

Instacart is slashing prices as the war against Amazon heats
up. 

Instacart, an online grocery delivery service that pairs
customers with personal shoppers to deliver groceries to their
homes, has quietly reduced the price of its annual Express
membership and non-membership delivery fees, a spokesperson for
the company confirmed to Business Insider on Wednesday. 

Customers now pay $99 a year rather than $149 for the Express
membership, which offers free delivery on orders over $35.
Non-Express delivery fee charges have been cut from $5.99 to
$3.99.

Instacart has also
removed the 5% service fee for its Express members, a
charge that caused much controversy among customers in the
past. 

A spokesperson for the company told Business Insider that these
changes were rolled out on November 14. 

Instacart partners with 300 different chains across the US,
including Amazon-owned Whole Foods. The new changes make
Instacart more competitive on price and allow it to better
compete with Amazon, which it battles with directly at Whole
Foods. 

Read more: 
We
compared Whole Foods’ grocery delivery from Amazon Prime Now and
Instacart, and it was clear which service does it
better

An Amazon Prime membership, which enables customers to use its
Prime Now delivery service for Whole Foods groceries, costs $119
a year or $12.99 a month. Two-hour delivery is free for any
orders over $35 and costs at least $4.99 for orders under
that. 

Until Amazon
announced that it would be buying Whole Foods in June 2017,
Instacart had been the only carrier to offer the Whole Foods
delivery service. 

The announcement sent shockwaves through the market and put
Instacart, which had exclusive rights to Whole Foods’ delivery at
the time, in a sticky situation. Experts
speculated that it wouldn’t be long before it was
muscled out.

These price cuts address a key issue that shoppers have had
— why would they pay more for an Instacart membership when an
Amazon Prime membership not only costs less, but has more perks?
By undercutting Amazon on price, Instacart may now become a more
appealing option, at least for Whole Foods delivery.