Online grocery delivery is experiencing exceptional growth due to the coronavirus. In recent weeks, Instacart has seen customer order volume increase by more than 500% year over year. But will the demand for these online services continue after the coronavirus?

Thousands of small businesses have closed due to the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. But one sector experiencing exceptional growth is online grocery delivery.

A recent survey from RBC Capital Markets in March found that 55% of respondents had purchased groceries online, compared to just 36% in 2018 and 15% in 2015. Online grocery delivery service Instacart told CNBC that demand in recent weeks is the highest in the history of the company and that customer order volume has increased by more than 500% year-on-year.

Once a luxury, the coronavirus pandemic has turned grocery delivery services like Instacart and Amazon Fresh into essentials overnight. But whether grocery delivery will become mainstream in the long term will depend on how they perform now.

/ “This is a big potential opportunity to acquire customers for the Instacarts of the world, the Amazon Freshes of the world. All consumers are turning to them to try them out,” said Mark Mahaney, managing director at RBC. /"They're going to have some patience for a service that isn't 100 percent. I think people are going to be somewhat realistic about that. But if Instacart and Amazon Fresh aren't able to do their job together in a month or two, you're going to have a I have a lot of people who tried to help, left a lot to be desired and will go straight back to the supermarkets./"

Watch the video above to learn more about the growth of online grocery delivery and how the industry may evolve after the virus subsides.

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The rise of grocery delivery

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