Instacart VP of Commercial Partnerships Ryan Hamburger on Affordability, Expansion & Agentic AI

Bonjour, and hello, everyone.

This is Amitak Retail coming to you live from the Vuzion Group booth here at NRF's big show in Europe.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are pleased to introduce the gentleman standing between us, Ryan Hamburger, Instacart's VP of Commercial Partnerships.

Ryan, welcome to omnitalk.

Thank you both for having me.

Yeah, we're excited.

Yeah, I was joking with Ryan before he wins a name game.

So let's get to know you a little bit.

So tell us about your background, your career, and also, also your role.

What does that actually mean?

What does your title mean?

Well, one, thank you both for having me.

And yeah, with the last name Hamburger, it's kind of maybe fitting that I'm in grocery.

Yeah.

But in my role as VP of Commercial Partnerships here at Instacart, think of it as overseeing all of our partnerships, both retail and non retail, within our ecosystem.

So I've been with the company now just over 10 years, manage all of our retail partnerships in North America, but also responsible for our sales team that's out there looking to assign new retailers as well as all of the great partners that make our ecosystem work.

All right, well, let's start off a little high level, Ryan.

What trends are you seeing in consumer behavior that are kind of driving the direction for your retail partnerships right now?

Yeah, I love the question.

I mean, I think there's a couple of things that come to mind.

You'll hear us use the word affordability quite a bit.

Right.

Pricing is top of mind for folks.

And as you think about, you know, yeah, grocery delivery, it's usually viewed as a premium service.

And so our view is how do we play that role in the ecosystem so we can bring what you want, how you want it, in a way that's affordable to the consumer.

That kind of comes to life in a few ways.

One, working closely with our retail partners to make sure we have the right level of pricing and loyalty integrations and things of that nature that allow consumers to go find the value they're looking for.

But also how do we, as a platform, make it affordable for our customers?

Right.

And you might want something in an hour, you might want something tomorrow.

And how do we use our fulfillment magic, if you will, to say if you want something later or if you want it at a different time, we can actually offer you a lower delivery price, for example, or bulk it together with other deliveries that you might want.

So we're always trying to innovate in the space to understand how do we bring value to life for our customer?

Because it doesn't always have to mean lowest price.

Right.

You seem to be getting good value for what you're paying for.

Well, Ryan, maybe a little bit deeper there too.

And how does that, how does that transpire then?

How are you messaging that to like the retail partners that you're working with to determine kind of how you, how you set up that sliding scale?

How are you messaging that to customers and to potential customers?

Yeah, it's great.

So I think it starts with insights.

Right.

So talking to our retailers and really sharing the data that we're seeing.

Retailers who are priced at same as in store pricing on our platform are growing 10% faster than retailers.

You mark up as a, as a starting point.

Right.

And so really helping them understand why affordability and why value is so important, I think then it also, how do you bring that to life in the actual product experience?

Right.

When you land on Instacart, you need to understand not just what retailers are you looking for, but where can you find the value that you're searching for that could be circulars brought to life.

It could be even just small things like badging in the experience to help the consumer understand the value they're getting so they understand what their options are.

Right?

Yeah.

And I saw your CEO Chris Rogers talking about the price transparency and the alignment between you and the retailers this week.

So I double click into what you just said then.

Are there new partnership business models that you're thinking about or how are you thinking about this all evolving?

Yeah.

Well, the beauty is in North America, we essentially work with almost every major and mid market retailer at this point.

So if you think about it through the North American lens, it's how do we continue to build out our capability set with the retailers that we work with?

You'll hear us use like enterprise retailer enablement quite a bit.

So think of that as like our Storefront Pro technology where we power the entire front end all the way through to fulfillment Sprouts is a great example of that.

Right.

They use our technology to power their entire E Commerce.

Okay, but then, you know, we are in Paris, so I think it's worth noting we are here for a reason and I think we remain equally excited about our international expansion efforts.

So we are actively talking with retailers of all sizes across the European landscape.

We've had caper live in Europe now for just over a year with Aldi.

We just announced our Morrisons pilot.

So we're super excited about that, yeah.

So, yeah, we think we see Europe as almost the next frontier for our expansion.

So you're not here for the escargot?

Well, maybe.

Maybe tonight a little bit.

Okay.

All right.

Well, Ryan, how, as you are coming into the European market and even as you're starting to talk to the few remaining retailers you're not already working with in the US how do you kind of say that Instacart differentiates itself in the market from some of the other competitors that are also being offered to those retailers?

Yeah, I think it's a fewfold.

I mean, one, as I mentioned, I've been here 10 years.

We play the long game.

So it's not about buying everything from us today.

It's about how can we work with you and over the years continue to be your enablement partner along your E commerce journey.

And I think that kind of makes it real, whether it's marketplace, whether it's storefront pro caper carts.

We have pricing technology and it's not an all fits one, it's how do we modularize it?

I think the other piece is we're not a retailer.

We never want to be a retailer.

We don't own inventory.

That is what our retailers do best.

We want to be the enablement for them so that when they're trying to reach their consumer, our tools enable that in a more effective way.

Got it.

So how do you, with all those different things that you do at Instacart, how do you measure the success of the partnership across each of the platforms?

You measure the success the same way across all those things you just mentioned, or is it to get different or varied?

How do you think about that?

Yeah, it's.

I wish there was an easy answer.

I would say it's probably a bit different.

And again, it comes down to first, how do we set the right strategy with our retailers?

Right.

What are they trying to achieve?

It could be engagement, it could be just penetration of their e commerce market, it could be growing loyalty.

And so I think we first have to anchor in what are the right North Star metrics for each partnership.

Stating the obvious, sales is king.

Right.

Everyone wants to drive sales.

And so that's a key piece of what we do.

But it's not just about a dollar in, a dollar out.

It's okay, let's look at things like net promoter score.

How does our net promoter score compare with other things that they're doing?

And so, you know, mid-60s for us is, is where we typically land, which is, you know, as you probably know, for retail, quite strong.

Kapir is north of 70 from an NPS standpoint.

So there's always the sales metrics, but you have to look at customer engagement.

Are they enjoying the experience?

Is it actually resonating with them?

Because that's what's going to be sticky for them long term.

Ryan, is there any.

Is there any particular metric that bubbles to the top overall for the industry that you're working with?

Like, you know, what I always.

What and I always hear is, you know, Instacart's a great customer acquisition tool to get you new customers that you probably otherwise wouldn't have shopping at your store.

Are there metrics that bubble to the top consistently?

Yeah, I would say twofold.

So on the, on the marketplace side, I think what you're getting at is incrementality, as we call it, and that, that has to be a key factor.

We're.

We're north of 70, 75% incremental for our retailers.

When you're coming is that much?

Yeah, when you're coming through the marketplace.

Now, that's key because, of course, this isn't a share shift game.

We have to be growing the pie with our retailers, and that's what we view the marketplace's role as.

How do we grow that pie for the customer?

How do we grow share of wallet?

When you look at the owned and operated side of it, when storefront pro other technologies, it's a little bit more of engagement and penetration because we know omnichannel shoppers are much stickier to their retailer.

Right.

And so it's not about changing your behavior from in store to digital.

It's how do we create the right ecosystem so that if you want to shop a retailer, you can shop them however you want.

You're not making a choice of which.

Exactly.

Okay, well, Ryan, let's close out.

I'm.

I'm curious, especially with all your experience at Instacart, working with such a large plethora of retailers, where do you see the retail landscape evolving within the grocery space kind of in the next three to five years?

What are, what are things that you're putting bets on?

We've made it at least 10 minutes without mentioning AI, so I feel like we.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, we did, didn't we?

That's crazy.

You know, it's funny.

It's obviously the buzzword these days.

We've been leveraging AI and machine learning for years at this point.

But I do think that's one of the big game changers coming.

Right.

You think about an agentic world where you now have voice and other things that could be doing things on your behalf.

How do we, as instacart, make sure we stay ahead of that?

And so we're going to really be doubling down there, both internally with the things we're building, but also looking to partners of ours to make sure it's not just a race on price, it's a race on personalization, convenience, and making sure you can still get what you want when you want it.

Yeah, that's.

Yeah, go ahead, Ed.

I was just going to say it's consistent with what we're hearing and I think it's important for our audience.

It's.

While it may seem far off, like agents shopping for you, it's coming.

The smartest in the retail industry are preparing for agents to be shopping for you.

So something, something tells me that that's not going to be too far off in our.

I do think you're spot on.

And there's, it does feel a little bit of like, hurry up and wait right now.

There's been a lot of talk about it the last nine months.

You know, we, we were one of the first to launch the operator model with OpenAI.

And so it's a space we've been leaning into.

But I do think you have to be thinking about it today because it's going to come fast and if you're not ready, you can quickly get past that.

Right.

Interesting.

That's an interesting nugget job.

I had not thought about you and Agentic AI to the degree that you're making me think about it right now, which we'll probably talk about on this week's podcast or very soon thereafter.

So.

Well, Ryan, thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

This is really great, really a pleasure.

It was really great meeting you.

Thanks to Fusion Group for supporting our content.

All NRF Paris long and until next time.

Anne, be careful out there.