How to Buy Canadian While Using Food Delivery Services
May 6, 2025
If you’re reading this blog post, you’re likely already familiar with The CANADA List. Maybe you even use it regularly (hopefully you do!) to identify products that are owned, sourced, and manufactured right here in Canada. The more people who do that, the more we can insulate our economy from whatever menace the U.S. dreams up next.
But it’s also very possible that you—like me—don’t always do your own shopping. With food delivery services like Uber Eats, Skip, and Instacart now a staple for many households, more and more of us are letting professional shoppers handle our groceries. That raises an important question: How do you keep shopping Canadian if you’re not the one doing the shopping?
I Set Out to Find Out.
For one recent Instacart order, I loaded up on produce and added notes to each item. I wrote things like “Only if Product of Canada” or—in the case of oranges—“Only if not from the U.S.” I can’t speak for other services, but Instacart is unbelievably good about honoring refunds if your order isn’t quite right. So my plan was simple: If I received anything that didn’t meet my criteria, I’d ask for a refund. Maybe my shopper would cooperate, maybe they wouldn’t—but either way, it felt like a worthwhile test. For me. For them. Maybe even for Instacart.
As it turns out, I didn’t need to worry.
My shopper was fantastic. She sent me pictures of every fruit and vegetable so I could confirm. When she showed me that the strawberries were from the U.S., I told her to skip them. The oranges weren’t from the U.S., so I kept them. She asked if blueberries from Morocco were okay (they were). It was honestly an invigorating experience—not just because I got what I asked for, but because my shopper clearly understood what I was trying to do and put in the time to help make it happen.
I tipped her an extra $4.00 for the effort. Because shopping Canadian does take extra time, and I appreciated that she made it possible. And it was absolutely worth it: I got my groceries, I stayed on the couch (or built out a new feature for The CANADA List), and I still shopped Canadian.
The Conclusion
So yes—there will be trade-offs. It’s not always easy. It won’t always be seamless. But giving up Instacart—or your food delivery service of choice—doesn’t have to be one of them.
P.S. Yes, I know Instacart is American. But: a) There’s no real Canadian alternative anymore (since Skip was bought out), and b) As long as they let me shop Canadian and honor returns on anything that doesn’t meet my criteria, that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make. We can only do as much as we can do.
UPDATE: I have since had several less attentive shoppers deliver me U.S. grown produce. So long as my note was clear re not wanting U.S. produce, I have asked for a refund from Instacart on each of these instances - and Instacart has granted them every time.
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