

Instacart (YC S12) launches website to complement its grocery delivery app - apoorvamehta
http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/14/mobile-first-desktop-second-instacart-launches-website-to-complement-its-grocery-delivery-app/

======
jhuckestein
Finally! I've had half-finished Instacart orders sitting on my phone, just
because I was too lazy to pick all the items from the mobile interface and
kept losing track of what I still needed (don't judge me!).

I just tried the site and ordered my weekly groceries within a few minutes. It
works great and has a refreshingly small amount of cruft. Just a searchable,
categorized list of items, a shopping cart and a checkout button. Good work!

~~~
HorizonXP
First thing I noticed when I logged in is that it carried over my shopping
cart from my phone. Fantastic integration, makes a lot of sense!

------
izak30
Unrelated:

Can I instacart w/o facebook? <strike>Can I instacart w/o an iPhone? (seems to
have a web interface)</strike>

I'm in Palo Alto, so I fit the first requirement on space. I also have a
desire to have this service and pay them my dollars occasionally.

Edit: Just realized that I missed the point of this post.

~~~
cocoflunchy
I guess you can: <https://www.instacart.com/store>

~~~
izak30
That page presents me with my zip, which gets me through the first barrier,
the second is "sign up with facebook"

~~~
apoorvamehta
We are going to be adding e-mail sign on shortly.

~~~
izak30
Great! Looking forward to it

------
ctide
The iPhone app is actually why I never use this. It's too cumbersome to put
together an order. It took my girlfriend and I just as long to find everything
I wanted (no efficient way to browse) and put together the order as it would
have taken us to just go to Safeway ourselves.

~~~
apoorvamehta
exactly why we launched the web version :)

------
bradgessler
Did Instacart stop with the iPhone notification SPAM?

------
sraj
There's no way to browse the products available without logging in. Maybe I'm
missing something?

------
tke248
I haven't tried the service since I'm not in the coverage area but it would be
nice if you could take a pic of a grocery reciept and let it automatically
import an order

~~~
HorizonXP
That's a difficult problem to solve. Nevermind the OCR issues surrounding
different store's receipts, the line item descriptions are so varied and
atrocious, it would be a very large undertaking to match them against
Instacart's existing product database.

Good idea, just hard to execute, and I'm not sure it would have a sufficient
payoff to be worth it.

~~~
robryan
Not if they did a partnership with a store to match line item data back to
products.

