If you're an Instacart Shopper who's curious about the new "On-Demand Shopping" option, this wikiHow has you covered. One you know how to complete an On-Demand Shopping order, you can dive in and start delivering.
Steps
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1Make sure that you are near your home zone. Although orders could come when you are out of your zone for Instacart, it's best if you stay inside it. If there are more than one zones in your region that have On Demand, as long as you have these zones enabled to your account, they'll pull up these orders in the On Demand tool when an order shows up.
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2Open the Instacart Shoppers app. The Instacart Shoppers app looks like a giant green Instacart shopping bag.Advertisement
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3Don't sign up for an hourly shift. On-Demand Shopping batches sometimes become available if no Shoppers are willing to accept the batch to shop, or no Shoppers are on the schedule for that hour.
- Once you begin an hourly shift, the On Demand option will go away and all batches will become a must-shop or lose percentage in your acceptance rating.
- Not all Instacart regions and zones have On-Demand Shopping at this time, but Instacart is trying to expand to other regions and zones and is rolling out the feature in select regions only, all while collecting advice and suggestions from other Shoppers via email .
- Brand new zones to some Instacart regions are beginning their shifts as On Demand-only. However, older regions are tweaking their older zones to include On Demand as well as hourly shopping.
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4Look for a box that says "No batches available." It will say "We'll notify you of any batches" below. This box is the On Demand orders tool and is constantly watching for new orders.
- If you don't have notifications on, you can manually refresh/check the status by pulling down on either the Dashboard or via the list of batches available for On-Demand shopping.
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5Wait for a batch to become available. If there's at least one order in the On Demand queue, this box will read "(# of batches) batch available!" and the button will be called "View batches". It will have a green-filled dollar sign icon to it's left on the button. Instacart orders tend to head to the On-Demand feature, when there are no shoppers available for the order, or none of the shoppers want this order, and you will be pinged to help shop it.
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6Look at the list of available orders for On-Demand shopping and tap the order you'd like to shop. On this next screen, you'll see not only the full earnings, but you'll also see an estimated time the order is due for delivery, along with how many items and units this order has. Below this, you'll see the address for the market you'll need to shop, if accepted.
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7Look at and tap the order when it becomes ready to accept - but act quickly. On Demand orders will appear no-different than an order request during an hourly-shift. However, there will be no countdown timer or sound until the request times out. It will still have the normal map and batch details like any other batch from a Scheduled shopper, but there are some drawbacks for On Demand shopping (as you'll see momentarily, directly below this).
- If you are viewing the request screen and another Shopper picks it up to Shop, it'll tell you that another Shopper has accepted the order - at which point you'll need to back out of the screen and refresh the list (pulling down from the top of the list until the rounded circular bar begins checking for other On Demand orders).
- The map and everything else about the batch will look like any other Scheduled shopping order.It'll display your earnings for this order request alone items + initial calculated tip, a complete listing of products in the order, and the distance from the shop to the customer's home (but you may prefer to look at the map for this), but sometimes the system will reset this to the base rate (part of a bug Instacart has yet to work out on some batches) of pay.
- If you decide to decline an order from the On Demand queue, stay tuned for the order to stay in the queue until it is accepted. Instacart may begin adding dollars to the order (in sets of $2 starting after about 15 minutes then every 4-6 minutes after that until it reaches a max earnings price). Other shoppers in that zone are watching this same tool and waiting until their earnings amount is allowable under their own personal preferences for the amount of items. In some spots, shoppers tend to take these orders within seconds while others may linger longer and you may end up playing "Beat the Clock" until the end.
- If the batch comes in when there are no hours for the Scheduled shoppers, it will go to the On Demand queue until the Scheduled hours opens up and a Shopper goes on-the-clock or someone else accepts the batch.
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8Tap the green Accept order button - found at the very bottom of the order screen below the order details. This button should be familiar to you, if you shop as a Scheduled shopper. You shouldn't have to scroll up at-all to see this, but might be better to see the products before, if you do.
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9Avoid declining an order. On Demand orders aren't must-takes, but can help to increase your earnings and increase your metrics. However, not everybody is willing to accept orders this way and you can decline without losing orders as part of your acceptance metrics by tapping the < button in the top left corner once the order request screen has been opened to look at the order. Sometimes, it may ask you why you declined it while other times it might not.
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10Navigate to the store and shop the order as usual, if you accepted the batch. wikiHow's (Our) guide on completing this has a complete list of steps.
- Even in areas where "In-store shopping" (Staging) and Delivering are two separate tasks, with On-Demand Shopping, you have to complete both sides together to complete the batch, however, this may change at some point in time.
- This is a big difference with On Demand orders and something that may be addressed once these areas begin shopping On Demand and as their hourly shifts begin to drop off the Instacart zone types information.
- Even in areas where "In-store shopping" (Staging) and Delivering are two separate tasks, with On-Demand Shopping, you have to complete both sides together to complete the batch, however, this may change at some point in time.
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11Fill out the survey, once Instacart asks you to. Sometimes, these surveys may show up the very next day, allowing you to continue to shop other On Demand batches. But these surveys will have different responses.
- With an On Demand batch, your survey reasons for Good have remained almost the same (Delivery routes were efficient, I had great customers, Store inventory/layout was good, I got all the batches I wanted, Great Tips, I improved my metrics, Shopper App worked well and Other).
- However, both Okay and Bad have changed significantly; both had different reasons but remained the same between the two. These reasons include: Shopper app had issues, Problems at checkout, Unpleasant customer or missing customer, I didn't like the available batches, Driving distances were too long, I've tried to accept batches but I receive an (sic), There were connectivity issues, No batches were available when I was available, I don't have enough time to review batches, Nothing, Received Poor Tips, Store inventory/layout wasn't good, Shopper support wasn't helpful, Had traffic or parking problems, Other).
- With an On Demand batch, your survey reasons for Good have remained almost the same (Delivery routes were efficient, I had great customers, Store inventory/layout was good, I got all the batches I wanted, Great Tips, I improved my metrics, Shopper App worked well and Other).
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12Look at your metrics, after you fill out the survey (the very next day). Scroll from left to right to view the three metrics screens based on the last order of the day (before) you completed.Advertisement
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