Ever find the perfect recipe only to realize you’re out of cinnamon or need 2 cups of all-purpose flour and only have 1 cup? Have no fear. Instacart is here! In most cases you can have your ingredients delivered within a couple hours. You’ll still have time to make that perfect pie and have it ready in time for dinner.
Before I go any further bragging about how much I love Instacart, I should mention that I’ve been an Instacart personal shopper for many years. In addition to being a former chef, I’m also a retired UPS driver and avid gig worker. I started with Instacart in 3019 when practically no one knew it existed. When the pandemic hit, suddenly Instacart was the only way to get your groceries delivered. During the pandemic I was one of the shoppers racing around grocery stores so everyone could have their groceries delivered without leaving the comfort of their homes. I even had a temporary pass from Homeland Security declaring that I was an essential worker and had the right to be out in public.
I love Instacart for multiple reasons. In most cases it’s the fastest way to get your pie ingredients delivered. If you only need a few ingredients and live near a store, chances are you’ll have your order within an hour. Secondly I’m not a big fan of corporate greed. Several major corporations offer express delivery but nowhere on this site will you find a link to have your ingredients delivered by anyone other than Instacart. Need I say more?
Under the ingredients lists on all of our recipes you should find a button like the one above to Get Recipe Ingredients delivered by Instacart. Instacart is not trying to sell you anything you don’t need. When their website opens you’ll see a list of the items you might need as well as the ones it assumes you may already have. Just select the items you need and check out. It’s one of the fastest and most efficient ways to get your pie essentials delivered.
One of the coolest features of Instacart is that it searches multiple stores for the items you order. It’s definitely not limited to grocery items. Let’s say you need granulated sugar, all-purpose flour, a wire whisk, and a glass deep dish pie plate. Instacart’s system knows the grocery store doesn’t have the whisk and pie plate. Have no fear! It will have the personal shopper stop at whichever store has the whisk and pie plate in stock before or after grabbing the flour and sugar from a grocery store. In the long run this might end up saving you money. Among the many stores from which Instacart offers products, they also deliver from Target, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Family Dollar.
Instacart normally allows you to choose the brand of the product(s) you’re ordering. If there’s a store brand available, Instacart usually shows it. Most of us have learned from experience which store brand products aren’t the best quality. I love French style green beans. After finding stems in the green beans multiple times, I realized I’d been buying a different brand. I went back to Del Monte and haven’t found a stem since. The store brands of most baking ingredients like flour and sugar are equivalent to the national brands. I’ve found that cheap spices are exactly that – CHEAP spices. I never buy off-brand spices because they just don’t have the same flavor or intensity as the good brands.
FULL DISCLAIMER: I’m an Instacart affiliate. If you place an order with Instacart by clicking a button or link on this site, I might earn a tiny commission on the sale. This relationship costs you nothing and doesn’t increase the cost of the products. I hate ads on websites and chose to become an Instacart affiliate rather than plaster ads all over this site, which we all know are obtrusive and obnoxious as heck. The next time you visit one of the well-known recipe sites and are irritated by all the ads at the top, bottom, and sides of every screen, you’ll realize why I chose to not use them.