This is just another business idea post.

The idea is that Instacart & Amazon Fresh already provide the grocery delivering experience. However, the missing link is the ability to port a receipe you find online directly into your online shopping cart.

As a consumer, I enjoy food blogs because they provide easy to follow reciepes.

I also enjoy Instacart for the ability to shop for these ingredients and have them delivered to my home.

Here’s where the friction is

The issue is you can’t directly purchase the ingredients for a given reciepe with 1 click. You have to switch between tabs and search for each ingredient individually. It’s a total pain.

I just want to be able to click 1 button “Buy on Instacart” and have these items added to my Instacart shopping cart.

Bonus round: Affiliate Network

So the incentives are clear for both the consumer and Instacart, but why would a food blogger want to go through the hassle of Instacart-ifying all their receipes?

The answer is affiliate links. If the bloggers were given commission for each line item sale, their incentives would be aligned with Instacart and the customer.

So make it happen Dylan!

So the major component that’s necessary to make this idea a reality is a grocery store API to integrate with.

Problem is, we’re just not there yet. Instacart seems to have one of the most robust grocery store system around, they cover a plethora of stores in 1 application. It’s very impressive. However they have no API to allow a integrate 3rd party like myself to pursue this idea.

Walmart also have an API offering, but it’s more for their online marketplace of vendors & drop shippers.

Amazon Fresh is an interesting competitor, but they’re not as widespread. At the time of writing they’re not even available in Cleveland. And as far as I can tell there’s no public API either.

So it already exists, kind of

As I’m writing this, I’ve found that a select few receipe sites have integrated in a similar way: https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/instacart-and-allrecipes-now-let-you-add-a-meals-ingredients-to-your-grocery-list-with-a-click/

So this concept has been around, but in a private deal between Instacart/Amazon Fresh & the very large receipe blogs.

I hope that this functionality is opened up to allow smaller food blogs to incorporate this new integration. It seems like a win-win-win for everyone. Everyone except Blue Apron and their competitors.