Empire expands its ecommerce via Instacart, Uber Eats partnerships

Canadian food retail company Empire Company Limited, and parent company of Sobeys, has announced partnerships with both Instacart and Uber Eats.

These new partnerships complement Voilà, Empire’s existing online grocery home delivery service. Instacart and Uber Eats users will now see Empire banner stores on their apps in Ontario, with rollout across Canada to follow.

The partnership, which will roll out at Empire brands including Sobeys, FreshCo, Farm Boy, and Longo’s, starts in Ontario, expanding Instacart’s offerings to include over 250 Empire stores in the province, with plans to expand delivery across Canada.

This comes after Instacart and UberEats announced an unexpected partnership back in May, in which the grocery delivery app added hundreds of thousands of UberEats restaurants to its app, under a “Restaurants” tab.

Instacart already partners with Canada’s top five grocers, making Empire the newest of 90-plus retail banners in Canada to deliver from over 6,000 locations across all 10 provinces in which same-day delivery on the Instacart marketplace is available. The grocer already delivers to approximately 90% of Canadian households.

“We are excited to be expanding our ecommerce offering and continuing to grow the market,” said Doug Nathanson, Empire’s chief development officer in a press release.