Instacart Reinstates Tips For Shoppers

Instacart, the online grocery service firm, said this past week that it is backtracking on its previous decision to eliminate tips for its shoppers and is reintroducing that feature.

The firm, according to TechCrunch, said that the decision to put tipping back into the business equation stemmed not from complaints from the shoppers but from customers, who lobbied for that online feature to be kept intact. The fact remains, however, that, in the aftermath of that removal, in late September, some shoppers boycotted Instacart.

In an interview with the site, CEO Apoorva Mehta said that Instacart has “tens of thousands of shoppers. I think that a lot of times it’s the most vocal ones you hear from.”

The original plan, said TechCrunch, was for Instacart to boost the earnings paid per delivery in tandem with the elimination of tips. But tips were based on performance, which also meant that good performers made relatively more money in tips and wanted that trend to continue.

In the interview with TechCrunch, Mehta stated: “A lot of times, what ends up happening is that, frankly, we were overcommunicative. We communicated for weeks before the chain before it happened. Genuinely, I think there’s always going to be the case that we can always do better. This is one of those cases where we can definitely do better. I hope the next time changes we carry out, we hope that we’re better at it now than we were before.”