Groceryshop 2024

The project:

Instacart doesn't show up to Groceryshop as one product. It shows up as three — a consumer app, an ads platform for CPG brands, and a suite of in-store tech for retailers, including Caper Carts and fulfillment. The design problem was fitting all three audiences, with all three product stories, into one 20x30 footprint at the grocery industry's biggest annual conference, without one overpowering the others.

What we did:

I treated it as a brand architecture problem, not a booth graphics problem. The organizing idea was "Level Up" — not the booth leveling up, but each audience leveling up their own business: retailers through Caper Carts and fulfillment, CPGs through the ads platform, consumers through the app. Partnering with Moonlab Productions, we translated that idea into a walkable metaphor for how food actually moves through the world — a grocery store on one end, a kitchen on the other, and an "online" portal space in the middle connecting them, with refrigerator doors linking the three zones. The at-home side became the kitchen where the consumer app lives. The in-store side became a real grocery store with shelves, produce, and a working Caper Cart for demos. The online portal in between held a sizzle reel for Instacart Ads, plus merch and an ice cream cart that gave visitors a reason to linger. A visitor could walk the loop in either direction and physically move through the entire Instacart ecosystem.

Results:

The booth was a standout success, praised by attendees, our sales team, and even our Instacart CEO for its engaging, retailer-focused experience. It was also featured in BizBash, and Event Marketer highlighting its impact. The booth was featured in BizBash and Event Marketer, and was called out internally by Instacart's CEO. But the result that mattered most was from the sales team: the three-zone architecture let them walk a retailer through all three sides of Instacart in one continuous conversation, without having to reset context. The brand architecture worked as a sales tool, which is how I know if a booth did its job.