The Scenario
You coordinate a corporate wellness program. The company is rolling out a healthy lunch initiative, and you've been asked to share a curated set of 20 lunch recipes with the entire 300-person office — complete with Instacart links so employees can order the ingredients from a store near the office. The office ZIP code is 10001.
The recipes are in an Excel workbook. The problem: different Instacart links resolve to different retailers depending on location, and the program needs links pinned to stores that actually serve the office neighborhood. Generic shoppable links that route employees to whatever happens to be closest to their home won't work for a company-wide bulk share.
The wellness committee set the deadline for end of week. You've never touched the Instacart Developer Platform. The API docs are open in a tab you haven't read yet.
The bad version:
- Call the Instacart retailer availability endpoint for ZIP code 10001. Figure out how to authenticate first.
- Get back a list of retailers and their keys. Pick the first available retailer. Note its key.
- For recipe one: construct the recipe link request with that retailer key embedded. Submit. Copy the returned URL.
- Repeat 19 more times, making sure you don't mix up retailer keys between recipes.
Twenty recipes is an afternoon. And if the program runs quarterly, it's an afternoon four times a year.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It reads the recipe data, runs the retailer lookup for ZIP 10001, selects the right retailer, and generates all 20 pinned recipe links in a single pass.
Look up available Instacart retailers for ZIP code 10001, then generate a shopping list link for each row in my Excel recipe table using that retailer's key and write the URLs into column D.
What You Get
- Column D populated with 20 Instacart recipe links, each pinned to the same retailer serving ZIP 10001.
- A consistent grocery-ordering experience for every employee who clicks the link — same store, same pricing zone.
- If no retailers serve the ZIP code, SheetXAI surfaces that error before generating any links, so you're not writing broken URLs to the workbook.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
You want to offer a backup retailer if the primary one is out of stock
Some employees have mentioned that the first-listed retailer doesn't always have the specialty ingredients in stock.
Check which Instacart retailers serve ZIP code 10001. For each recipe in this workbook, create two recipe links: one pinned to the first available retailer (write to column D) and one pinned to the second available retailer (write to column E). If fewer than two retailers are available, note that in column F.
The ingredient data is split across two worksheets that need to be joined first
The recipe names are in a "Recipes" worksheet. The ingredient lists are in a separate "Ingredients" worksheet, matched by recipe ID in column A of both.
Join the Recipes worksheet (columns: ID, Recipe Name) with the Ingredients worksheet (columns: ID, Ingredient List) on the ID column. Then look up Instacart retailers for ZIP code 10001. For each joined recipe row, create an Instacart recipe link pinned to the first available retailer and write the URL into column D of the Recipes worksheet.
You need links for multiple office ZIP codes, not just one
The company has offices in three cities. Each needs retailer-pinned links for its own ZIP code.
For each office ZIP code in column A of the "Offices" worksheet, look up the first available Instacart retailer. Then for each recipe in the "Recipes" worksheet, create retailer-pinned Instacart links for each office ZIP and write them into separate columns labeled by city name.
Look up retailers, generate all links, and produce a distribution-ready summary in one pass
The wellness committee wants a final worksheet with just recipe names and links that they can paste into the company intranet.
Check which Instacart retailers serve ZIP code 10001. For each recipe in this workbook, create an Instacart recipe link pinned to the first available retailer and write the URL into column D. Then create a new worksheet called "Wellness Links" with two columns: Recipe Name and Shop Here URL, one row per recipe, sorted alphabetically by recipe name.
One prompt handles the retailer lookup, link generation, and the committee handoff worksheet together.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your recipe workbook with a target ZIP code, then ask it to look up the nearest Instacart retailers and generate pinned shopping links for every row. Related: Check Instacart Retailer Availability by ZIP Code and the Instacart integration overview.