Dive Brief:
- Albertsons has tapped Grubhub to provide grocery delivery service from most of the supermarket operator’s stores, the companies said Tuesday.
- The restaurant delivery company is fulfilling orders through its online marketplace for banners, including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, Acme and Tom Thumb.
- Grubhub is positioning itself to compete in the third-party grocery delivery space with companies like Instacart and Doordash that dominate the business.
Dive Insight:
Albertsons is the first national grocery partner for Grubhub as it looks to use its core restaurant delivery business as a springboard to build a presence in the grocery space, where delivery accounts for roughly a third of online orders.
The partnership with Grubhub builds on Albertsons’ existing grocery e-commerce relationships with Instacart and DoorDash. Instacart has worked with Albertsons since 2017, while DoorDash struck a deal with the grocery chain in 2021.
Through the arrangement, Grubhub is allowing people who visit its website and app to order groceries from almost 1,800 of Albertsons approximately 2,200 supermarkets. Grubhub intends to “add more supply in markets where Grubhub delivery is available” in the future, a spokesperson for the delivery company said in an email.
Grubhub expects to fulfill most orders within an hour, although delivery speed will depend on the number of purchased items and the distance between the store and the customer’s location, according to the spokesperson.
Customers who belong to Grubhub’s membership program, Grubhub+, will not incur delivery fees on eligible orders from Albertsons, according to the announcement.
Grubhub’s disclosure that it has inked a deal with Albertsons follows the company’s April tie-up to provide delivery service to the nearly 1,000 independent grocery retailers served by e-commerce platform Mercato.
As Grubhub accelerates its drive to attract grocery customers to its delivery platform, the company is also facing pressure in the restaurant delivery space from Instacart, which announced in May that it would let diners order restaurant meals on the Instacart app through a deal with Uber.
