Where should Instacart's autonomous delivery launch first?

A take-home product challenge: a full strategy and pilot for autonomous last-mile grocery delivery.

Instacart's APM take-home asked for two things in five to eight slides: a strategy for autonomous last-mile grocery delivery, and a plan to pilot it. The strategy had to cover why to invest in autonomy, where it makes sense, how the shopper and customer experience would change, the effect on per-order cost, and the risks. The pilot had to cover where to run it, the MVP to build, what to learn, and how to measure it. The prompt is hypothetical and not affiliated with any real Instacart work.

My answer was Mochi: a sidewalk-robot delivery service piloted in senior living communities, where the real customer is not the resident but the caregiver managing care from a distance. The deck below makes the full case, from why now, to which market, to the pilot and the metrics that would decide whether to scale, pivot, or stop.