MapleBear: A Slow Fade

The filing with the SEC tells us this much: they sold. Eighteen million dollars, give or take. Money changing hands. It always does. But looking back, MapleBear, or Instacart as some remember it, represented a brief, bright flicker in the ongoing saga of getting groceries to people. A logistical puzzle solved, momentarily, with apps and personal shoppers. We thought, for a time, that this was the future. The future, of course, has other plans.








