How employers are using Instacart Health to fuel employee health and wellness

While clinical care is essential, it’s what we eat that often determines how healthy we are. Nutrition sits at the intersection of behavior, environment, and economics – and for many working Americans, the cost and convenience of accessing nutritious food and everyday essentials are major barriers.

This gap doesn’t just affect individuals; it affects employers, too. When employees struggle to keep their households supplied with the food and essentials they need, it can add stress, decrease productivity, and lead to job turnover. That’s why forward-looking companies are beginning to integrate practical benefits like grocery stipends into their strategies — improving workforce health while reducing costs tied to absenteeism, retention, and chronic conditions.

With Instacart Health, we’re building technology that makes offering these benefits practical. Fresh Funds – our customizable category-specific digital stipends – allow employers to give employees online grocery credits that can be redeemed from any retailer on the Instacart marketplace. It’s a flexible, scalable benefit that helps employees put fresh, nutritious foods on the table while helping employers invest in workforce health in a measurable way.

Employers across industries are already using Fresh Funds to meet the unique needs of their teams:

• Supporting New Parents: A national employer launched a Fresh Funds program to support employees during parental leave. Similar to Instacart’s own employee benefit, the program provides a stipend for new parents to spend on groceries and baby essentials like formula and diapers, easing the transition for employees during a critical life stage.
• Meeting Employee Demand: Through our partnership with Forma, the flexible benefits platform helping companies customize and scale employee spending accounts, more than 85 companies with more than 70,000 combined employees now offer Fresh Funds through their flexible benefits. Fresh Funds have quickly become the most redeemed benefit offered on Forma’s lifestyle spending account platform, with nearly 70% of employees who try the benefit choosing to use it again.
• Driving Engagement in Integrated Care Programs: Instacart Health also partners with integrated care platforms like Foodsmart and Ciba Health, embedding Fresh Funds into chronic condition management and telenutrition programs. When food access is built directly into care pathways for conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and prediabetes, participation rises and engagement improves. In an assessment of 18,000+ Foodsmart members, those using both telenutrition and Instacart’s online grocery services nearly doubled their program engagement, compared to those using telenutrition services alone, suggesting that combining telenutrition and Instacart boosts engagement, demonstrating the power of combining nutrition access with healthcare.

A Future Where Essentials are Part of Employer Benefits

When companies invest in offering access to nutritious groceries and everyday essentials, they invest in their people. Employers across a spectrum of industries are showing that practical benefits can strengthen both workforce health and business outcomes. As employers everywhere face rising healthcare costs – projected to increase as much as 9% in 2026 – benefits like Fresh Funds make it simple for employers and their preferred solutions providers to offer employees access to nutritious foods and encourage healthy habits, leading to long-term benefits.¹ Instacart is committed to working with employers and the providers that support them to innovate, measure, and scale these employer benefits programs.

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¹https://www.businessgrouphealth.org/newsroom/news-and-press-releases/press-releases/2026-employer-health-care-strategy-survey