The News
Dollar General is adding Instacart to its delivery lineup. A pilot starts in the coming weeks at about 7,000 Dollar General and pOpshelf stores in six states. The chain plans to reach about 20,000 stores in 48 states this fall, according to the announcement.
That makes Instacart the fourth way to order from the same Dollar General shelf. Shoppers can already use the chain’s myDG app, DoorDash, which has delivered from its stores since 2021, and Uber Eats, which joined last year. Each of those covers roughly 17,000 to 18,000 stores, so Instacart would end up the largest of the four.
Why It Matters
Each app a chain adds brings another commission and another catalog to keep in sync. On the default setup at DoorDash and Instacart, it also brings another set of gig shoppers picking orders in the aisles. DoorDash’s published rates for store delivery run from 15% to 30% of the order.
For a chain already on one or two apps, the next app can bring in new shoppers or split the ones it already has. Dollar General is one of the few chains that has published numbers on it.
Who Else
At least six large chains finished the set of all three apps in 2026. Kroger added Uber Eats in January, two months after it closed three automated fulfillment centers. Ace Hardware, Academy Sports and Foot Locker have each added Instacart. Foot Locker went from one app to three in five months. Costco went live on DoorDash nationwide this month.
Of the six, only Dollar General also runs its own delivery for the same items. Costco owns a fleet, but it carries the appliances and furniture that a gig driver can’t.
Peer Insights
Dollar General measures its delivery apps as one channel. Delivery added 70 basis points to comparable sales in the first quarter and 40 in the second. Executives said on the August call that about 80% of those sales would not have happened in a store, and that delivery orders carry a larger basket than store trips.
The company also tracks where delivery shoppers go next. “We estimate we have already seen more than 1 million new customers first engaged through our delivery and then become an in-store shopper at Dollar General,” Todd Vasos, the chief executive, said on the call. About three-quarters of Americans live within five miles of a Dollar General, by the company’s count.
Other chains facing the same decision tested it or split it differently:
Academy Sports checked for overlap before adding its second and third apps. Its research found “minimal overlap between the customer bases for each of these services,” Steve Lawrence, the chief executive, told investors in June.
Tractor Supply splits by order type. Basket orders go to Instacart, while feed, fencing and mowers stay on its own Final Mile network, which made as many deliveries in the first half of 2026 as in all of 2025.
Costco splits by product. It rents same-day delivery for groceries and owns the trucks for heavy goods.
Kroger moved toward renting. It shut its automated fulfillment centers, made Instacart its main delivery partner and expects the change to add about $400 million to ecommerce profit this year, according to its announcement.
Pushback
Dollar General’s 80% figure covers myDG, DoorDash and Uber Eats together. It says nothing yet about what a fourth app adds on top of three. None of the six chains has published results for a single app.
Store execution is the other risk, because on DoorDash the driver shops a Dollar General order, not store staff. In DoorDash’s driver forum on Reddit, drivers have spent the past month posting about Dollar General’s checkout barcode failing and about low-paying Dollar General orders. In one August post, a customer described an order stuck for more than 24 hours while the store and DoorDash blamed each other.
Walmart and Target run their own delivery. Walmart has run its fast delivery on its Spark driver network alone since DoorDash ended their partnership in 2022. Target delivers same-day only through Shipt, which it owns.
What’s Next
The Instacart pilot starts in six states in the coming weeks.
The pilot will show whether Dollar General staff or Instacart’s gig shoppers pick the orders, and whether app prices match the shelf, as Ace, Tractor Supply, Academy, Foot Locker and World Market promised when they joined Instacart.
A delivery subscription is due for testing later this year.
The next quarterly results could be the first with a fourth app inside Dollar General’s delivery number.
