What is your free time worth?
This is something my husband and I spend a surprising amount of time debating. We have very different views on it and on services like Instacart.
I love a lot about the app: that I can find a recipe and automatically add ingredients to my cart, that I can build my cart over time, and that it helps me avoid impulse junk food purchases.
But the biggest value?
Time.
The time I would have spent shopping can be spent doing literally anything else.
I stumbled on a post in r/instacart: Instacart actually tracks how much time you save. After some digging, I found mine.
28 hours saved.
Here’s what’s interesting: almost every message I’ve received from Instacart emphasizes potential money savings not what I’ve actually saved.
That value is easy to find in the app. It’s surfaced, calculated, and visible. But it’s not carried through into lifecycle messaging. And the same is true for time saved (except that’s even harder to find on the app).
This feels like a missed opportunity, but there may be a reason for it.
It’s likely Instacart has tested different value propositions, and cost savings may outperform time savings at a broad level. That would explain why so much of their messaging emphasizes dollars over time.
But what works on average doesn’t always work for every customer.
In my case, the dollar savings weren’t especially compelling because I was a light user. But 28 hours saved even over a longer period is meaningful. That’s a weekend. That’s multiple evenings back.
Even that value is below average time savings, it’s meaningful because that’s the reason I signed up in the first place. And, it’s what made Instacart a unique service.
And I never saw it until I went looking.
Even my renewal email leaned on generic averages and projected savings, instead of showing my actual behavior. No mention of what I personally saved in dollars or time.
When my usage started to drop off, why wasn’t I reminded:
- “You’ve already saved 28 hours—what are you doing with that time?”
- “Want to get even more of your time back?”
Instead, I got generic messaging about delivery fees.
Low Hanging Fruit 🍓
Instacart already has the data—they’re just not activating it in their lifecycle messaging.
A simple shift to personalized, time-based messaging could:
- Reinforce the real value of the product
- Re-engage low-frequency users like me
- Complement (not replace) cost-based messaging for broader audiences
Because for some customers, this isn’t about saving money. It’s about buying back time.