Hannaford Supermarkets is now offering same-day delivery from about two-thirds of its Maine stores through a partnership with the nationwide grocery pickup and delivery service Instacart.

Based in San Francisco, Instacart is a service that hires professional shoppers to pick up orders made online and drive them to the customer’s home. It generally costs $99 a year, with deliveries included in that subscription price, although customers are expected to tip their shopper/driver.

Hannaford said the service will be available at all Hannaford stores in southern Maine. At least initially, same-day delivery won’t be available at 22 of the chain’s 63 Maine stores. The stores not offering the service are primarily in central and northern Maine, mostly in more rural parts of the state.

A spokeswoman said the Instacart service also will be available at most other Hannaford stores in four other states. About 150 of Hannaford’s 184 stores in Maine, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont now offer the service, which delivers fresh food, dry groceries, household essentials and other items to customers’ doorsteps in as soon as an hour, Instacart said in a news release.

Hannaford customers can shop online at Instacart.com or through the Instacart app on their mobile device. They enter their ZIP code to select their local Hannaford store and then begin adding items to their virtual cart.

The service was rolled out as a pilot program at select locations this summer, said Ericka Dodge, a spokeswoman for Hannaford. She said the program was officially launched last week.

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Hannaford said the Instacart program will complement its existing Hannaford To Go service, in which customers can order items online, have shoppers select and bag them, and then pick up the groceries curbside.

The to-go service is available at 85 stores in New England and New York, and the company said it will add the service to 16 more stores by year’s end. Hannaford said it also offers its own delivery service at 12 locations and will add 19 more by the end of the year.

The Instacart service is available for same-day delivery or can be scheduled up to two weeks in advance. The default delivery choice, the company said, is for drivers to leave the groceries at the door for contactless delivery to maintain social distancing.

Instacart said it works with more than 400 retailers and offers delivery from more than 30,000 stores in more than 5,500 cities, covering 85 percent of households in the U.S.


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