Instacart Helps Caregivers Access Groceries and More
Grocery tech company Instacart has teamed up with nonprofit health platform CaringBridge to permit easier community-led support for groceries and essentials for family caregivers and their loved ones. CaringBridge users can now opt to use Instacart to send and receive groceries and other crucial household items, including pharmacy supplies and over-the-counter medications, pet food, beauty staples, and electronics, from local, regional and national retailers across the United States.
Under the new partnership, CaringBridge has provided guidance on the grocery items that caregivers and patients need most often, through a CaringBridge Virtual Storefront on Instacart. Caregivers and their loved ones can also create personalized lists with needed items from their preferred retailers, allowing them to share the lists with their communities to help them restock supplies or to meet the needs of specific dietary plans or occasions. Other tools that Instacart offers to support caregivers include Instacart Health Care Carts, which allow anyone to order and send items from the 1,500-plus retailers on Instacart directly to someone they want to support. Once an order is placed, recipients can schedule their delivery window and track the order.
[RELATED: Instacart Rolls Out Initiatives With Expectant Moms, People With Diabetes]
The partnership also adds to the benefits of the Meal Train program providing meal support, which already exists within the CaringBridge platform.
“Access to nutritious food is essential for health and well-being, and Instacart empowers caregivers and loved ones to meet each individual’s unique needs with ease,” noted Sarah Mastrorocco, VP and general manager of health at San Francisco-based Instacart. “Our partnership with CaringBridge enables us to make caregiving more seamless, helping people provide and receive meaningful support in their daily lives. From delivering a few much-needed essentials to stocking up on a full week’s groceries, Instacart helps transform simple gestures into impactful acts of care.”
“We know that food requests are one of the top asks for support from family caregivers to their communities,” said Tia Newcomer, CEO of Bloomington, Minn.-based CaringBridge. “Food helps healing, and so we’re thrilled to be able to expand the ways in which nutritional needs of both family caregivers and their loved ones are met during a health journey. Caregivers face incredibly complex challenges throughout a health journey – from feelings of isolation and overwhelm to emotional exhaustion from being ‘always on.’ This partnership with Instacart helps alleviate that burden by providing instrumental support while also allowing for personalization of dietary needs in support of any health journey.”
Access to Instacart is available via the organization’s website and via the CaringBridge iOS app later this month. The CaringBridge community encompasses all 50 states and more than 242 countries.
Instacart partners with more than 1,500 national, regional, and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 85,000 stores across North America on the Instacart Marketplace. With Instacart Health, the company is providing tools to increase nutrition security, make healthy choices easier for consumers, and expand the role that food can play in improving health outcomes. Maplebear Inc. is the registered corporate name of Instacart.
