At 5:50 a.m. on a Wednesday in late June, the sun just peeking over the horizon, Larry Askew woke up in the front seat of his Nissan Sentra. The Sentra was parked where it is every night: in a lot across from Wegmans on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington. And once he woke up, Askew did what he does every morning: stuck on his black plastic glasses — missing an arm because he’d accidentally sat on them — drove across the street to the Wegmans parking garage, opened the Instacart app on his phone and started scrolling.

Askew, 45, is a professional shopper — and a highly dedicated one. From 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. every day of the week, he shops for Instacart, bagging groceries mostly at this Wegmans and driving them around the city in his Sentra. In the afternoon, he turns on the UberEats app and delivers takeout until about 11 p.m. Then he goes to the gym to shower, drives back to the Wisconsin Avenue parking lot, reclines the front seat and falls immediately asleep.

Americans have come to rely heavily on shoppers like Askew to select their groceries, an astonishingly personal and intimate task. Instacart, one of the largest grocery-focused apps, served more than 13 million users in 2022, according to industry publications, and employs at least 600,000 shoppers; Amazon Prime, FreshDirect, Gopuff and others employ many more. Use peaked in the first years of the pandemic and has leveled off more recently, but professional shoppers are now a permanent fixture in most U.S. grocery stores. These gig-economy strivers struggle with uncertain pay, occasional poor treatment at the hands of customers and the sheer physical stress of hauling around groceries all day. A look inside the private lives of Instacart shoppers shows the determination and the precarity that go into making this job work.

By 10 a.m. that June morning, Askew was frustrated. He’d only managed to snag one small delivery, earning about $30. That meant he was already behind on his goals to earn about $20 an hour and $250 for the day. Sitting at a table in the Wegmans eating area in a pink hoodie and gray jogger pants, he stared at his phone as a fisherman stares out to sea: trying not to jump at the small fry and hold out for bigger ones. Meanwhile, his competition — fellow local shoppers, many of whom were seated at nearby tables — were doing exactly the same thing.

When customers place an order through Instacart, the app groups them into “batches” of one or more orders that are reasonably close geographically, then posts them in the Instacart Shopper App, where nearby shoppers can view and select them. Every time a new batch gets posted, shoppers can see the amount they’ll earn (“base batch pay,” a sometimes mysteriously calculated amount, plus tip), the distance they’ll have to drive and the number of items in the batch. In a dense, higher-income area like Northwest Washington, batches pop up frequently. But the area is also dense with Instacart shoppers, so many batches are only on the app for a few seconds before someone grabs them. Shoppers have to do rapid real-time calculations about whether a batch is worth their time, and then act fast to secure it.

Askew, who has been working for Instacart since August 2022, is relatively picky about his batches. He mostly shops at Wegmans and doesn’t like to take batches that include multiple grocery stores. He doesn’t like to take orders under $40, and he tries to keep the distance short to maximize his hourly rate. Askew is also a Diamond Cart shopper, the highest possible level in a recently rolled-out rewards program. Shoppers earn points based on how often they use the app, provided they stay above a 4.7 (out of 5) rating. Askew has completed 2,765 orders and has a perfect 5 rating, based on his most recent orders. From March to June, he earned more than twice as many points as he needed to qualify for Diamond Cart status. Because of this, he gets priority access to good batches.

But even with all that experience and access, Askew sometimes struggles to find a worthwhile batch. One frustrating aspect of the app for many users is the proliferation of bots, some of which have been banned in the Google Play store but are still available for online download, that scoop up good batches before anyone can even see them.

“If you see somebody [and] every single day, this guy has a huge order, every single time, he’s using the bot,” Askew said.

Instacart officially prohibits the use of bots, but in practice, Askew and other shoppers say, the company does little to combat them. (According to an Instacart representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the company has taken legal action against the bots and their users as well as beefed up security on the app.)

That Wednesday, Askew is not seeing much.

“Twelve miles for $35 is not really a good batch. Seven miles for $21, not really a good batch,” he says, thumbing rapidly through. He considers a $41, 13-mile batch, but it’s gone before he can click on it. Finally he sees one worth his time. He clicks “accept,” waits — “this is the stressful part, where you’re just like, ‘Did I get it, did I get it, did I get it?’” — then reads the words “Transitioning batch” with significant relief.

Once he gets access to the communication portal, Askew sends each of his three new customers a short message copy-and-pasted from his Notes app. “Hello … I will be your shopper today. Have no worries because I understand the importance of shopping for your [loved] ones. That’s why I shop for clients like I’m shopping for myself and my loved ones,” it begins.

“I like to reassure people,” Askew said. “Because you don’t know me. You have some guy basically picking out your fruit you’re going to eat. … It’s very intimate.” He sends the message, he says, to build trust, and because it’s what he would want someone to do for him. But building a human connection is also smart customer service, one of the important lessons Askew learned in his previous job selling cars.

Now the order is on his phone, organized by grocery store layout to guide Askew through Wegmans in the most efficient manner possible. Speed is essential for grocery app success, and much of the shopper experience is structured to incentivize a quick delivery. Instacart calculates each shopper’s “seconds per item” number; anything under 100, Askew says, is good. (His average is 75.)

Part of Askew’s speed advantage is that he sticks close to Wegmans, where the layout rarely changes. Costco, on the other hand, changes its layout frequently; while Costco’s batches are often larger and more lucrative, shopping there can lower your speed rating. Experienced shoppers know which local stores are well organized and which have the smoothest carts: Giant has good carts; the elevators at Whole Foods on P Street are always breaking and the store is confusingly laid out. This sort of information can shave seconds off a speed rating.

Some professional shoppers sprint through the store like they’re playing Supermarket Sweep. Askew moves like a marathoner: easily, confidently, with tremendous focus and spatial awareness but zero obvious hurry. He fist-bumps Wegmans employees and other Instacart shoppers, who all seem to know him and have obscure nicknames for him. He takes his time with produce, gently squeezing several avocados until he finds one at the perfect level of ripeness.

“I don’t pick out soft ones unless they tell me to,” he said, shaking his head at a too-ripe avocado. “That one’ll be mushy in a day.” His theories on appropriate banana ripeness are intricate: “Some people might want a banana like, right now. And some people might want to wait. So I get a combination of really really, really green, and a little green, in case they want one right now.”

Because he’s large and strong, Askew’s physically able to fill heavy orders and carry them up flights of stairs at the delivery location, even if he is exhausted at the end of the day. But grocery app employees without that capacity can really struggle, other shoppers say. One Amazon Prime shopper described stepping in when she saw an eight-month-pregnant shopper struggling to fill her cart. And no one likes the “water people,” as the Amazon Prime shopper described the folks loading up shoppers with multi-packs of heavy bottles.

Shoppers are prone to carpal tunnel syndrome, joint pain and other physical ailments, and because they are independent contractors, they have no guaranteed access to benefits or right to unionize. (After a group of Instacart shoppers attempted to unionize in 2021, they all lost their jobs as part of a larger companywide layoff. The Instacart rep pointed out that these shoppers were swept up in a standard restructuring. Instacart provides shoppers with accident insurance for injuries on the job.)

Customer interactions can also be a major stress, as for all gig-economy workers. A phenomenon described by multiple Instacart shoppers is tip-baiting, where a customer posts a high tip to ensure that someone picks up their order, then lowers it in the app after delivery. (Instacart offers protection for shoppers in this scenario.) Reviewers can be randomly cruel, and customers can be rude in other ways as well. Askew says he sometimes has to remind himself, “You’re taking somebody’s food to their house. It’s not really that hard. … Just do it!”

Once Askew’s cart is full, he checks out and heads to the Sentra. He loads the bags in separate areas of the car to avoid mixing up people’s groceries, sticks on his one-armed driving glasses and heads off to the first delivery.

While the chaotic atmosphere of Wegmans has some similarity to a typical workplace with co-workers, the driving part of Askew’s day is far more solitary and thoughtful. He likes listening to interesting YouTube videos, preferring history, sports and true crime. And driving gives him space to think about why he’s doing this work in the first place.

Before Instacart, Askew worked at a car dealership, until one day he looked out and saw two salesmen running toward a car. He thought, “Is that what I look like to customers? Running towards a car? I wasn’t really being fulfilled.” He began to drive for UberEats and Instacart, realized he could make more money doing that, and quit selling cars. For Askew, it’s not as much about the money as about the independence.

“My whole life, I don’t chase money, I chase freedom,” he said. “I want to be free. UberEats and Instacart gave me some freedom.”

Last winter, as Askew was driving to pick up an UberEats order, a stray bullet passed through the car he was renting at the time, shattering the driver’s side window and going out through the passenger’s side. Askew slept that night in the car — shivering, broken glass everywhere — swapped it out at the rental place in the morning and turned on the UberEats app again that afternoon.

Lying in the bullet-shattered car that night, Askew made a vow not to give up on his dream: developing a sports trivia app, Score 7, which he works on for one day every week. But to follow that dream, while also paying child support he says he supplies to his ex-wife, the mother of his two young children, he had to give up his apartment and move into his car in February.

“I don’t see [my kids] as much as I want to, because I’m always working,” he says. And it’s hard to make time for anything else, like doctor’s appointments or getting his broken glasses fixed or seeing friends, because he’s always aware that he could be making money: “Every time I try to make the time, it’s like I feel guilt — gotta be working, gotta be working, gotta be working.” He knows he needs to create more time outside of work. But “it’s a balance I always have to be figuring out.”

The first two stops on Askew’s route go quickly: the customers aren’t home or don’t come out, and Askew drops off his bags at the door, sends a final notification text and moves on. But at the final stop, a customer steps out to say hi — one of the rare in-person interactions Askew has with the people he spends his whole day shopping for.

The customer, Devan, had chatted with Askew via the app about some replacements she needed. She’s on the phone, but she calls out Askew’s name like they’re old friends and takes the grocery bags.

Devan and Askew smile and wave goodbye. Askew gets into the Sentra and drives back to Wegmans to sit once again in the eating area, stare into his phone and wait for a new batch to appear.

Meanwhile, Devan begins putting her groceries away, getting ready for an Italian-themed tea party she’s throwing for friends that weekend. Devan, who picks up germs easily in stores, is grateful to Instacart shoppers for helping her stay healthy. Plus, she enjoys the brief interaction, especially with someone as friendly as Askew.

“They are a piece of my life for a second, then they go about their way, and I have my groceries,” she said.