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Instacart has introduced a three-pronged tiered-rewards program, Cart Star, to drive loyalty among its shoppers (delivery personnel).

The program offers incentives across three tiers: Gold, Platinum or Diamond.

To qualify for Cart Star, shoppers accumulate points based on the number of orders they fulfill within a three-month qualifying period, earning 10 points per order. Gold Cart status kicks in at 200 points, Platinum Cart at 1,000 points, and Diamond Cart will have earned 2,000 points.

Rewards under the program include:

Shoppers must maintain a 4.7 average customer rating to have access to the program.

The incentive program is the final installment of its four-part rollout of new tools for its workers that also included tip protections and an overhaul of its  customer rating system to dilute the impact of hard-to-please customers.

Instacart has faced numerous walkouts from its independent contractor workforce over worker protections, including two threatened strikes in 2020 and 2021 as growth surged during the pandemic. Recently, sales have slowed as consumers return to pre-pandemic shopping habits and moderate their spending due to inflation. Heightened competition is also arriving from Uber Eats and Doordash.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Will Instacart’s Cart Star rewards program lead to greater retention of its independent contractor workforce? Does it help resolve some of the shortcomings of the gig working model?

4 Comments on "Instacart offers tiered rewards to gig workers"

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These rewards are both useful to workers and relevant to retention. I think this program is quite incentivizing, especially in an inflationary economy where recessionary-level layoffs looms possible.

Tier-based loyalty programs work in most environments because they define clear goals to reach additional benefits. For workers (shoppers), once they start receiving benefits, then the ability to leave those benefits behind becomes something they will think about the next time they have a tough day.

Of course, the benefits need to be reachable and useful, but as we can see in the list above, there is a little bit of something for nearly everyone, so this should work. The badges (recognition) are also important and in a community type app, they represent a degree of trust that customers want, and workers will strive for in order to stand out.

So the only good metric for employees is sheer volume? And overall customer reviews, which can’t be fully controlled by the gig worker?

I think there could be more creativity here to drive better overall customer experience rather than incentivizing the employee just to fill a lot of orders.

Just as a retailer might create a “loyalty program,” why not do the same for employees – especially independent gig workers who, like customers, choose who they want to work for, when they want to work, etc.? As the gig economy continues to grow, so must the strategies that companies use to incentivize the gig workers.

Which of the four rewards in the Cart Star program will do the most to drive retention among Instacart’s independent workforce?