The Scenario
You're on the growth team at a grocery delivery startup evaluating which US markets to enter next. Your analyst built a Google Sheet with 80 target ZIP codes — each one a potential expansion market. Before the quarterly planning meeting on Friday, you need to know which Instacart retail partners are available in each area so you can assess competitive overlap.
You found the Instacart Developer Platform docs. The retailer availability endpoint is documented. You have no idea how to write the API call, and the meeting is in three days.
The bad version:
- Open the Instacart Developer Platform, find the retailer availability endpoint, figure out authentication.
- Make the first request for ZIP code 10001. Get back a JSON array of retailer objects. Figure out which fields to extract.
- Manually copy the retailer names into column B. Move to ZIP code 10002.
- Eighty rows, each requiring a separate API call and manual transcription of the response.
Your job is market strategy, not API integration. The 80-row manual approach isn't a plan — it's a detour from the actual work.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads the ZIP code list, calls the Instacart retailer availability endpoint for each one, and writes the results back to the sheet — all from one prompt.
For each ZIP code in column A of this sheet, look up available Instacart retailers and write their names as a comma-separated list into column B.
What You Get
- Column B populated with a comma-separated list of Instacart retail partners available in each ZIP code.
- ZIP codes that return zero retailers get "No retailers found" rather than a blank cell.
- ZIP codes that are invalid or outside Instacart's coverage area get a note in column C.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
You also want a count of retailers per ZIP code for quick ranking
The team wants to sort markets by the number of available retail partners, not just see the names.
For each ZIP code in column A, look up available Instacart retailers. Write the retailer names as a comma-separated list into column B and write the count of available retailers into column C.
The ZIP code list has duplicates and invalid entries mixed in
Some ZIP codes appear twice. A few entries are five-digit strings that aren't valid US postal codes.
Clean column A by removing duplicate ZIP codes and flagging entries that are not valid 5-digit US postal codes. Then look up available Instacart retailers for each valid, unique ZIP code and write results into column B.
You want to filter the results to only show ZIP codes where a specific retailer is available
You're specifically evaluating overlap with one major retail chain. You only care about markets where that chain is available on Instacart.
For each ZIP code in column A, look up available Instacart retailers. In column B write the full retailer list. In column C write "yes" if "Kroger" appears in the retailer list and "no" if it does not. Sort the sheet so "yes" rows appear at the top.
Clean the ZIP list, check availability, and produce a market-ready summary in one pass
The Friday presentation needs a separate summary tab with just the high-coverage markets (5+ retailers).
Deduplicate and validate the ZIP codes in column A. For each valid ZIP code, look up available Instacart retailers and write the count into column B and the names into column C. Then create a new tab called "High Coverage" containing only rows where column B is 5 or greater, sorted descending by retailer count.
All of that — deduplication, API calls, filtering, and the summary tab — in one prompt.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your market research sheet with ZIP codes, then ask it to look up Instacart retailer availability for each one. Also see: Generate Retailer-Specific Instacart Recipe Links and the Instacart integration overview.