The Deployment
Big Y Foods, one of New England's largest family-owned supermarket chains, has activated in-store foodservice kiosks and a dedicated online ordering storefront across all 79 of its locations, using FoodStorm, Instacart's order management technology for prepared foods. The rollout makes Big Y one of the larger regional grocers to deploy a unified omnichannel prepared-foods platform at full-chain scale in a single push.
The new system gives shoppers three ways to order: self-service kiosks in-store featuring Big Y's made-to-order kitchen menu — including its 'Wich Way sandwiches, wraps, bowls, from-scratch pizza, fresh fried seafood and sushi — a dedicated pickup storefront at ordering.bigy.com, and delivery through the Instacart Marketplace. Customers can order on demand or place catering orders days in advance, with prepayment baked in at checkout.
Back-of-House Impact
For store teams, FoodStorm consolidates kiosk, online and staff-entered orders into a single digital production workflow. The centralized system is designed to improve kitchen accuracy, streamline back-of-house operations and give managers demand visibility ahead of peak periods — a persistent pain point for grocery delis competing against foodservice operators on speed and consistency.
John Fraro, Vice President of Fresh Foods at Big Y Foods, tied the launch to the chain's 90th anniversary and its ongoing effort to make the prepared-foods experience more seamless. "FoodStorm helps us better manage that business behind the scenes while creating a simpler, more seamless ordering experience for our shoppers," he said.
Grocer vs. QSR
The move underscores a broader competitive dynamic playing out across the grocery and convenience channel: supermarkets and c-stores are increasingly targeting the same meal occasions as quick-service restaurants, and the technology gap has historically favored the QSR side. FoodStorm General Manager Rob Hill framed the product explicitly around that battle. "Independent grocers like Big Y are competing for the same meal occasions as quick-service restaurants, and they deserve technology that helps them deliver the convenience and value customers expect," he said.
Instacart, which acquired FoodStorm in 2022, positions the platform as a turnkey solution for retailers that want to modernize prepared-foods ordering without building custom infrastructure. The company now partners with more than 2,200 retail banners representing nearly 100,000 stores across its broader enterprise platform. For regional chains like Big Y — which also operates Big Y Express fuel and convenience locations alongside its supermarkets — the ability to layer catering and on-demand ordering onto an existing foodservice program without separate point-of-sale investments is a meaningful operational lever. The full-chain activation at 79 stores simultaneously signals that FoodStorm's implementation model has matured enough to support enterprise-scale rollouts without a phased pilot runway.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
