Costco's shrimp trays are now available for same-day home delivery for the first time, bundled into a broader party-platter rollout that Instacart and Costco announced this week across warehouse locations nationwide. The expansion marks the debut of Costco's perimeter departments — bakery, deli, and prepared seafood — on both the Instacart marketplace and sameday.costco.com.
The Seafood Angle
Shrimp trays have long been a high-velocity item at Costco warehouse clubs, driven by their popularity at catered gatherings, holiday entertaining, and large-format events. Until now, members could not order those platters for delivery; fulfillment was limited to in-warehouse pickup. The new capability, enabled by FoodStorm — Instacart's end-to-end order management platform for grocery perimeter departments — connects Costco's deli teams directly to online orders, closing a gap that had kept prepared seafood out of the same-day delivery channel. The offering sits alongside custom sheet cakes, 10-inch round cakes, sandwich platters, and fruit trays, but the shrimp tray is the clear seafood headline for foodservice-adjacent retail watchers.
Technology Stack
The rollout is powered by FoodStorm, an order management system Instacart acquired and embedded into its enterprise platform specifically to handle the complexity of made-to-order and perishable perimeter categories. Coordinating advance customization windows, deli labor, cold-chain handoff to a delivery driver, and real-time inventory visibility across hundreds of warehouse locations is operationally heavier than routing a packaged-goods order — particularly for temperature-sensitive proteins like pre-cooked shrimp that require consistent refrigeration from prep through last-mile delivery. The technology stack routes confirmed orders directly to warehouse bakery and deli teams, reducing manual intervention and enabling same-day fulfillment at scale.
Partnership Context
Instacart and Costco have partnered since 2017, when same-day delivery launched through the Instacart Marketplace. The relationship has since expanded to cover Costco's e-commerce sites in the U.S., Canada, Spain, and France via Instacart's Storefront Pro technology, plus EBT SNAP payment acceptance and alcohol delivery. Ryan Hamburger, Chief Commercial Officer at Instacart, described the latest expansion as "another exciting step" in nearly a decade of collaboration, noting that it brings Costco's made-to-order deli and bakery online for the first time.
For seafood retail and foodservice observers, the development underscores how warehouse-club prepared seafood — historically an in-store impulse category — is being repositioned as a plannable, delivery-eligible SKU. As operators and grocers look to grow seafood sales through digital channels, Costco's shrimp tray entering the same-day delivery mix signals meaningful channel expansion for value-added, ready-to-serve shellfish at the retail level. Buyers tracking cold-chain logistics for prepared shellfish will want to monitor how FoodStorm's temperature management protocols perform as the program scales across Costco's U.S. warehouse network.
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.
