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DoorDash Is Buying Instacart for $17 Billion—What Happens to Shoppers?
So recently, Doordash announced that they will be buying out Instacart for $17 Billion, and as the season of buyouts continues and the acquisition hasn’t closed yet, it does beg the question to a lot of gig workers:
What is going to happen to the active Instacart Shoppers?
Which is especially concerning for the shoppers who worked their ass off to reach the higher tier statuses of their rewards program.
So in this video, We are talking about:
Doordash’s announcement that they plan to buy out Instacart
What they are saying vs How it ACTUALLY is
Everything in between!
Disclaimer: The content of this video does not contain and is never intended to be legal, business, financial, tax, or health advice of any kind. This video is for entertainment, educational, and informational purposes only. It is advised that you conduct your own research and consult with qualified professionals before applying anything you find online.
I also want to be clear that everything we are going to go over is very market dependent, and what applies to me and my market may not apply to you.
Why DoorDash Wants Instacart
Before we get into why DoorDash wants Instacart, understand that this deal is not finished. The companies have signed an acquisition agreement, but it still requires Instacart shareholder approval and regulatory clearances. They currently expect it to close in late 2027 or the first half of 2028. Until then, they remain separate companies, so this announcement alone does not change how you accept orders or work on either platform.
The strategic pitch combines DoorDash’s delivery network and customer reach with Instacart’s grocery expertise, retailer relationships, advertising business, and technology. Instacart’s CEO specifically highlighted its enterprise tools and advertising and data ecosystem as part of that opportunity.
That gives the acquisition significance beyond the shopper app. Instacart provides technology for grocery websites, fulfillment, in-store operations, advertising, and AI. Its latest quarter included 91.4 million orders, approximately $1.1 billion in revenue, and $147 million in net income. DoorDash is buying a profitable grocery technology business with an established customer base.
What Does This Mean for Everyone Else?
Now there aren’t a ton of details of what each party can expect but here is what we know so far. Customers and retailers are being promised that the combination would provide:
One membership fee covering DashPass and Instacart+.
Access to more stores and delivery options.
Continued freedom for grocers to work with competing delivery platforms.
Those are announced plans and commitments for after closing, that can be seen as reassuring but not much else has been confirmed.
As far as for drivers and shoppers, Instacart says there are no immediate changes to how shoppers accept or deliver orders. The businesses will continue operating independently until closing. Its stated goal is to generate more orders closer to shoppers, giving them more opportunities to choose work that meets their needs.
DoorDash also says Instacart shoppers would retain batch information and flexibility, including the choice to remain exclusively on Instacart or accept DoorDash work. Which implies that Doordash doesn’t plan on shutting down the shopper app on Instacart as it did for previous acquisitions, such as Caviar’s driver app.
What Will Happen to the Instacart Shopper Platform?
Now the key distinction with this announcement is that more earning opportunities do not automatically mean better earnings. The announcement does not resolve the practical questions drivers will care about:
Will base pay, batch sizes, or tipping practices change? Base pay for each of these platforms has been on a radical decline and each platform has radical differences with how Instacart and Doordash customers interact with their platforms?
On one hand, if Instacart adopts a lot of the practices on Doordash, we can see better tipping rates, changes from the “first come first served” system with order acceptance, and even the end of tip baiting on the platform instead of the lousy tip guard system.
Will more workers compete for the same grocery orders? They claimed that they can decide to take from one platform, the other, or both but will that actually help drivers/shoppers if they have to choose which one to operate on?
We have seen with Doordash’s Tasks app that you can earn money there as well, but you cannot be on a Dash and on Tasks at the same time, it is one or the other. Will that practice be added to Instacart as well or will they block you there too?
Will ratings, account access, or deactivations eventually become connected? Drivers have had to maintain ratings and violations on each app independently because they were two different companies, will that change here?
And if someone accepts a Doordash shopping order on Instacart and they get a bad rating, does that affect their Instacart shopper app, their Dasher account, or both?
Both platforms have made promises to show orders to higher tiered drivers on their respective platforms before lower tier drivers under the pretense of “priority access” and while that doesn’t mean as much as a Doordash driver, because orders are viewed one at a time anyway, having that edge on Instacart’s “first come, first served” claiming system, that means EVERYTHING!
So what happens to the status those shoppers worked their ass off to earn? Will their existing tiers and priority access carry over, will they have to qualify under a different rewards system, or could that progress get reset entirely? That matters when shoppers have made business decisions around maintaining those benefits, and it is another question this announcement hasn’t answered.
How will support work across the two platforms? Both apps have received criticism for being unsupportive for drivers and shoppers, however in my opinion if Doordash support took over here, I think it would be more beneficial for drivers and shoppers.
What is the most important concern to with the Instacart acquistion?
Will base pay or tipping rules change?
Will more workers compete for the same orders?
Can shoppers stay available on both apps?
Could ratings or deactivations become connected?
While Doordash support has issues for sure, there is something to be said about them being engaged in actually doing something as opposed to sometimes not being able to get on the phone with them at all.
Again, nothing has been confirmed for sure and everything I just said was speculation at best but we will keep you updated as much as possible.
Buying a Public Company Works Differently
Unlike ezCater, which is privately owned, Instacart is publicly traded, meaning investors buy and sell its shares on the stock market. DoorDash’s proposed acquisition therefore involves public disclosures and approval from Instacart shareholders. Its $65-per-share offer represents a 26% premium over Instacart’s October 22 closing price, giving shareholders an incentive to support the sale.
Uber’s proposed purchase of ezCater involves negotiating with its private owners and investors, without that same public shareholder process. However, both acquisitions still require applicable regulatory approvals. Being privately owned does not exempt a deal from scrutiny over competition.
For drivers and shoppers, the main point is that announcing an acquisition does not mean ownership changes immediately. DoorDash and Instacart will continue operating independently until the deal closes, which they currently expect in late 2027 or the first half of 2028.
Is This Too Much of a Monopoly?
Combining DoorDash and Instacart raises a legitimate competition concern, especially because both already offer grocery delivery. However, a large acquisition is not automatically an illegal monopoly. Regulators will examine whether the deal could substantially reduce competition, including which alternatives customers, retailers, and workers would realistically have afterward.
For drivers and shoppers, the concern is straightforward: two independent sources of work would come under one owner. Keeping separate apps does not preserve independent competition between the companies behind them. If you switch platforms because the pay or policies are getting worse, having both platforms controlled by the same business could weaken that alternative. That does not guarantee pay cuts, but it deserves attention alongside promises of more orders.
DoorDash argues that combining its delivery network with Instacart’s grocery technology would help local stores compete with larger retailers. It has also committed to allowing grocers to use competing delivery platforms. Those are potential benefits, but the question is whether they outweigh the loss of competition. For gig workers, more orders would be welcome—but meaningful choices about who we work with and which offers we accept matter too.
Preventing Multi-Apping?
I spoke about this briefly already, but I think it is worth raising the concern further. DoorDash already requires you to choose between being on a Dash and using its Tasks app at the same time. That raises a practical question: if Instacart keeps its own shopper app after the acquisition, will shoppers be able to stay available on both platforms, or will DoorDash apply that same restriction?
In the past, they would not stop you from multi-apping in general but they used more subtle methods of anti-multi-apping such as tracking if they are the app that is actively open on their phone or in the background, and rewarding people who are taking more orders in a row with momentum.
Now they are not only back to acquiring companies, instead of just immediately integrating them into their platform, I wonder if they are going to implement the same rule as Tasks and slowly strangle the life out of the shopper app before they finally shut it down.
OR are they going to go into a different method entirely? Letting shoppers who ONLY want shopping orders to be shoppers on that platform and let the Dasher app be predominantly food delivery?
I don’t know and again, it is too early to say but I would like to know how much control and freedom they will be allowing us to have.
Interesting Timing for This Announcement
One side note that I think deserves to be mentioned is how this announcement is definitely larger than most, but also comes not long after Uber announced that they will be buying out ezCater.
I wonder if that is because they planned on holding off that announcement entirely so that way Uber doesn’t take more business from them.
It just seems like the moment Uber talked about the big plan they had to buy out ezCater, Doordash dropped this huge announcement to kind of take from their thunder.
However, another point worth mentioning is that Doordash seems to be going in a generally different direction than Uber at the moment. Doordash wanted to develop their grocery shopping side, whereas Uber wants to FINALLY get into the catering space more definitively than before.
Doordash already had a strong foothold in grocery shopping and Uber just started to get the ball rolling in the catering space. Either way, this is fascinating to me how all this news dropped around the same time.
Final Thoughts
This is an interesting development for the gig driver scene because we finally hit a consolidation phase with gig apps to where acquisitions started up again.
Yes, Grubhub was bought out by Wonder and that was big news because of the loss that JustEat takeaway had.
Uber is buying out ezCater and Delivery Hero, big news and opens up opportunities for themselves but also removed opportunities from smaller gig companies under ezCater as well. Instead of buying out the smaller contracts, they bought out the supplier to those companies.
Doordash bought Sevenrooms for customers to go from delivery to dine-in and now buying out Instacart to better their grocery shopping volume.
So a lot of drivers are left with a lot of questions all pertaining to where they go from here? I have often preached that diversification of your gig portfolio is vital and this is why, you don’t know how long your gig app will be active and this is quite the position changer.
Also, consider developing your exit strategy as well. The gig economy is an income bridge to what would be a long term goal, and not the goal.
There are multiple avenues you can take but the key is taking action to look out for yourself. No one is going to look out for your best interests better than you are.
If you would like to add some other perspective to Doordash's acquisition of Instacart, feel free to email me: drivenwyld@gmail.com and who knows? Maybe your email or perspective and be featured in a post as well!
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