Instacart Building Retail Operating System

The real upside is that Instacart can move from taking a fee on a grocery order to taking a cut at nearly every digital touchpoint a retailer uses to sell. Shopify did this online by starting with storefront software, then layering in payments, capital, shipping, and ads. Instacart is building the brick and mortar version, with storefront software, fulfillment tools, in store hardware, shelf pricing software, and retail media that can run on retailer sites, apps, and even smart carts.

• Instacart already has the raw ingredients for a stack business. It works with more than 1,500 retail chains across 85,000 stores, generated $3.63B of TTM revenue as of September 2025, and has shifted mix toward higher margin ads and software on top of marketplace fees.
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• The stack is concrete, not conceptual. Connected Stores includes Caper Carts, Carrot Tags, Scan and Pay, FoodStorm, Storefront Pro, and Carrot Ads. That means one retailer can use Instacart to power online ordering, in store navigation, digital shelf labels, order management, and ad sales to brands.
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• The Shopify comparison is about monetization density. Shopify turned merchant services into the majority of revenue through payments, capital, shipping, and related tools. In 2025, Shopify Payments alone processed $248.1B of GMV, showing how infrastructure ownership lets a platform keep expanding its share of each merchant dollar.
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From here, the most important shift is Instacart selling a retail operating system, not just delivery demand. If more chains adopt Storefront Pro, Carrot Ads, Caper Carts, and pricing tools together, Instacart becomes harder to replace, gains more recurring software and ad revenue, and can extend beyond grocery into other store based categories that need the same digital plumbing.