Instacart brings its online grocery service to portions of Sonoma County

Instacart will launch its same-day grocery delivery service in Sonoma and its surrounding communities Thursday as part of the San Francisco company’s latest expansion.

Residents from Sears Point and north along Highway 121 to Boyes Hot Springs will be able to get groceries, toiletries, pet food, wine and alcohol delivered to their homes through Instacart’s website and digital app.

The new service is part of the company’s latest expansion in the Bay Area to serve an additional 542,000 households stretching from Sonoma County to Contra Costa County and comes as there is significant upheaval in the supermarket industry with consolidation and a race to gain an advantage in the online grocery business.

“I definitely see us expanding more in the future into Sonoma County,” said Sean Twersky, senior regional director for Instacart. The company selects its new locations in large part from customers asking Instacart to come to their neighborhood, he said.

Safeway already provides same-day local delivery for orders placed before 8:30 a.m. and Raley’s offers curbside pickup. Instacart operates differently, as it employs independent contractors who receive the online order, shop for the items and then drive the products to the residence or place of business.

That structure allows the company to make deliveries as fast as one hour after placement and draw from a wider array of stores, which include Whole Foods Market, CVS, Petco, BevMo, Smart & Final and Costco. It also draws some items from Safeway. Most delivery fees are $5.99 per order, Twersky said, with expedited orders costing $7.99.

“The majority of the customers shop weekly and half-weekly for their entire household,” he said. Young, urban professionals and parents with kids are the biggest users of the site, as it allows them to save time by forgoing a trek to the grocery store.

Within the last year, the local grocery industry has been significantly altered, with Safeway purchasing G&G Supermarkets, Nugget Markets of Sacramento buying two existing markets in Sonoma and Glen Ellen, and Oliver’s Markets converting toward an employee-owned business. The grocery industry is likely to undergo even greater change in the future as Amazon announced in June it’s buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion; the Seattle company revolutionized online shopping for Americans.

Oliver’s has had discussions with Instacart, but has held off, given that the Internet company also charges retailers to sign up for the service, said Steve Maass, president of the Cotati-based grocer. “In the grocery business, you are looking at pennies on the dollar for profits,” Maass said.

Brick-and-mortar grocery stores have been able to survive in the Internet era so far, he said, because many of their products such as meat, milk and frozen items cannot be left on doorsteps for hours on end. “It’s all the perishable goods,” Maass said. “Ice cream and refrigerated stuff.”