Instacart is a great example of a company that as it exists today is a interim, not end state business. There will be opportunities to change that positioning, but they will face some critical choices ahead.

Supermarkets are built purposely in prominent locations to catch retail eye & the layout is designed to offer a wide range of SKUs while drawing attention to the highest margin and/or velocity ones.

1st problem: the supermarket's sprawling layout is suboptimally designed for efficiently picking & packing your order.

2nd problem: Instacart doesn't have perfect visibility into the SKUs at a given supermarket in a given day, so the inefficiency for a picker is twofold-can't find items, then have to wait for your approval for replacement goods before checking out.

So what is Instacart? The two things they do efficiently are:

1) own the customer & monetize the data that comes along w/ that.

2) Efficiently deliver last mile logistics.