Delivery platforms are moving beyond restaurants and deeper into everyday retail – and that could change how consumers interact with stores
The grocery delivery business is entering a new phase as Instacart, Uber Eats and DoorDash continue signing partnerships with some of the country’s largest retailers, putting an increasingly broad selection of groceries and general merchandise inside apps that were once primarily associated with restaurant delivery.
The most visible example came this week when Costco expanded its partnership with Uber Eats to nearly 600 warehouses in 47 states, up from 17 states previously. Costco members can order groceries, household essentials and other merchandise for either on-demand or scheduled delivery through Uber Eats.
One day later, Costco announced a nationwide U.S. launch with DoorDash, giving members another delivery option for groceries, household goods, electronics, seasonal merchandise and Kirkland Signature products. DoorDash said Costco was among the most-searched retailers not yet available on its platform and that the addition means it now partners with eight of the 10 largest food retailers in North America.
The Costco announcements followed another significant Northeast grocery deal. On Sept. 9, Uber Eats and Wakefern Food Corp. announced that more than 375 supermarkets across the cooperative’s ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer and other banners had joined the Uber Eats platform. Customers can order fresh groceries, prepared foods and household essentials for on-demand or scheduled delivery.
Instacart Aggressively Growing Its Network
On Sept. 2, Instacart announced an exclusive same-day delivery partnership with World Market, making the retailer’s assortment of global foods, home décor, furniture, gifts and other merchandise available through Instacart in as little as an hour. Instacart said World Market was its first and exclusive online same-day delivery partner.
On Sept. 22, Instacart announced a partnership with Gopuff that will bring Gopuff’s assortment of groceries and everyday essentials to the Instacart Marketplace, with orders fulfilled through Gopuff’s own micro-fulfillment and delivery network. Gopuff orders can be delivered in as little as 15 minutes in applicable markets. The agreement also connects Gopuff to Instacart’s Carrot Ads retail-media technology.
And on Sept. 23, Instacart and Dollar General announced a partnership that will initially put approximately 7,000 Dollar General and popshelf stores in six states on the Instacart platform, with plans to expand to approximately 20,000 stores across 48 states this fall. Customers will be able to order food, snacks, household essentials, health and beauty products and other merchandise, with delivery in as little as an hour.
Taken together, the deals represent a remarkable expansion of the digital front door to American retail. Instacart says it now works with more than 2,200 retail banners representing nearly 100,000 stores. Its second-quarter 2026 gross transaction value reached $10.35 billion, up 14 percent year over year, while orders increased 9 percent to 90.3 million.
The Store Is No Longer the Starting Point
The grocery store is increasingly becoming a fulfillment point inside a much larger digital marketplace.
What interests me about these deals isn’t really the delivery. Delivery has been around for years. The more important question is what happens when the app becomes the place where the shopping decision begins.
For generations, grocery shopping started with the store. A consumer decided where to shop, drove there, walked the aisles, saw displays, encountered promotions and ultimately decided what went into the basket.
The delivery platforms are beginning to reverse that sequence. A shopper can now open Uber Eats and see Costco, ShopRite, Price Rite, The Fresh Grocer and hundreds of other stores. A consumer can open Instacart and move among thousands of retailers without physically moving at all. That changes the competitive battlefield.
The question becomes less about which store is closest to the consumer and more about which stores, products and prices the digital platform puts in front of the consumer. That could eventually affect everything from store loyalty to merchandising.
Consider the Costco expansion. A Costco member who needs paper towels, coffee or snacks no longer necessarily has to make a Costco trip. The physical warehouse remains important, but the relationship between Costco and its customer increasingly can exist without the customer entering the warehouse.
The same dynamic applies to grocery stores. If a ShopRite customer routinely builds a weekly basket through Uber Eats, the customer is still shopping at ShopRite. But the relationship is also increasingly with Uber – it’s their interface, search results, recommendations, promotions and loyalty ecosystem.
That should be just one of the worrying aspects here for retailers.
Who Owns Your Customers’ Relationships?
There is an obvious upside for grocery and retailers here. You gain reach, convenience and incremental sales without having to build every piece of a delivery infrastructure yourself. But there is clearly a strategic tradeoff.
The more consumers become accustomed to shopping across retailers through a handful of large platforms, the more those platforms could influence how consumers discover products, compare retailers and decide where to spend their money.
Uber Eats, Instacart, DoorDash and others aren’t simply assembling delivery networks. These ‘delivery companies’ are morphing into digital shopping centers through which multiple retailers compete for the same consumer.
They are assembling enormous collections of consumer shopping behavior. Instacart, for example, is simultaneously building a marketplace, an advertising business, retailer technology and AI shopping tools.
Its September rollout of Clementine; an AI shopping assistant, illustrates where Instacart sees the next step. Consumers describing what they want and having technology help build the basket. The Gopuff deal makes the strategy even clearer. Instacart isn’t merely adding another retailer. It is connecting another commerce platform and its advertising technology into the broader ecosystem.
It also raises an important question for retailers: who owns and ultimately controls the customer relationship?
A supermarket can have a strong loyalty program, excellent private brands and a well-run store. But if an increasing portion of its digital transactions originates inside somebody else’s marketplace, the retailer may be sharing more of that customer relationship and control of it with the platform.
That is why I think these announcements from Costco, Wakefern, Dollar General, and others should be viewed as more than a collection of delivery partnerships. They are pieces of a larger transformation.