Instacart Hiring Aggressively Amid Coronavirus Outbreak As Demand For Grocery Delivery Rises

One business that's not suffering due to the coronavirus is Instacart. Instead of scaling back, which a lot of companies affected by lockdowns due to the world's current uncertain situation are doing, Instacart is actually expanding its workforce.

Mark Killick, Instacart's VP, announced on Friday that the grocery delivery app is on an aggressive hiring mode as it looks to meet the increasing demand for its services, which spiked to 300% year over year from last week alone. Instacart has also seen growth in its community of active shoppers from 200,000 to 350,00 in just a couple of weeks.

The San Fransisco-based company is looking to increase its Care team staff who will provide answers for customers inquiring about Instacart or asking for answers to delivery-related issues. Instacart will bump up the Care team staff from 1,200 to 3,000 agents.

"COVID-19 is affecting every one of us over a sustained period of time and, as a result, we've had to reimagine and rescale our Care operations overnight to best serve customers and shoppers across North America," Killick wrote on the company's news announcement.

Last month, it was also reported that Instacart planned to hire an additional 300,000 "full-service shoppers" in the next three months as it tries to ensure that they keep up with the increased demand due to the coronavirus.

"The last few weeks have been the busiest in Instacart's history and our teams are working around the clock to reliably and safely serve all members of our community," said Instacart founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta in a statement.

A large part of the company's move to double their independent contractors is to ensure that customers would not have to wait a week to get their orders, but this was also met with a lot of its workers going on a strike.

Instacart's gig workers complained about how the company continues to do business without the extra measures in ensuring workers' safety amid the rising concerns about the coronavirus. The protesters asked for hazard pay, hand sanitizers, and paid leave for those with existing health conditions.