Instacart Rolls Into Dorchester, Mattapan and More Neighborhoods

Dorchester. Photo by Pruet Boonma on Flickr/Creative Commons

Attention, residents of Dorchester, Mattapan, and other neighborhoods often overlooked by delivery services: Instacart has heard you. The company announced this week it has expanded its on-demand grocery delivery services into those communities, as well as into Everett, Chelsea, and parts of East Boston.

“The decision to expand was based on the thousands of requests that were received from our fellow Bostonians,” the company writes in a press release.

Instacart, which can save its users a trip to Star Market, Costco, and other stores, launched in the Boston area in 2014, but not throughout the city’s largest neighborhood. Instacart was available in one of Dorchester’s zipcodes when the Dorchester Reporter looked at the range of several leading delivery services like Caviar, Postmates, and Drizly earlier this year, and found five of them neglected Dorchester and Mattapan.

Mayor Marty Walsh told the Reporter the discrepancy stems from the companies’ “wrong perception” of populations in areas like Dorchester and Mattapan. “If they’re not delivering here, they’re doing a disservice to the people in those neighborhoods and to their company as well,” he said in January.

At the time, an Instacart spokesperson told the Reporter that the company uses data users share with it to map out its expansion plan. So, thanks for your personal info, Dorchester residents: Have a sack of fruit.

In the Boston area, Instacart delivers goods from Whole Foods, Costco, Harvest Co-Op, CVS, Star Market, Market Basket, and Hmart, plus meal kits from Brookline’s Pantry, and booze from Total Wine & More and Vinodivino. Instacart also recently joined forces with Boston-based PlateJoy to offer personalized meal plans.