Beginning today, Aldi offering delivery service to suburbs
After a successful test program, Aldi is joining other local retailers and offering delivery service to suburban shoppers.
Aldi, with its U.S. headquarters in Batavia, began offering its Instacart online grocery ordering and home delivery service on Monday to residents across the Chicago area, Northwest Indiana and as far west as Rockford. "The response to our Instacart pilot in Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles was overwhelmingly positive, and with nearly 200 Chicago-area stores, it only makes sense to bring online delivery to this major market," said Jason Hart, CEO of Aldi U.S.
Instacart delivers groceries in as little as an hour, the company said.
"We're thrilled to grow our partnership with Aldi in a key market like the Chicago area as the demand for online grocery shopping and delivery continues to grow, and look forward to bringing the exceptional value Aldi offers to more shoppers," said Sarah Mastrorocco, vice president of business development for San Francisco-based Instacart.
The move to offer delivery services comes at a time when grocery stores are fiercely fighting to compete. Other Instacart partners in the area include Costco, Kroger, Whole Foods, Albertsons and Jewel-Osco.
A report from the Food Marketing Institute and market research firm Nielsen in January this year estimated online grocery spending during 2016-2025 to grow from 4.3 percent of the total U.S. food and beverage sales to as much as 20 percent, or more than $100 billion. Last year, online grocery sales were about $20.5 billion, Reuters reported.
And according the NPD Group, 52 million Americans buy their groceries online - a number that will only increase with tech-savvy young people turning to the internet to buy food for themselves and their families.
To stay competitive, Aldi said last year that it would invest $3.4 billion to expand its U.S. store base from more than 1,700 currently to 2,500 by 2022.