INSTACART | blitz

Team: Melissa Hanley: Lead Designer
Seth Hanley: Project Architect
Liz Evoy: Interior Designer
John Hunter: Specifications/Construction Administration

Instacart hired Blitz to design their new 45,000 SF office located in the heart of San Francisco to accommodate rapidly growing staff. Their goal in the design of the new space was twofold: to attract and retain talent while manifesting their core values of humbleness and quality. To address these goals, Blitz was tasked with the design challenge of creating a new workplace archetype centered on personal experience, social context, and serious fun.
“I don’t believe having a nice office space is any measure of success, but I do love that it allows us to highlight our culture. An office should remind a team why it’s here. For us, that’s to improve the lives of our customers, so we had customer and shopper stories built into the landscape here.”

Apoorva Mehta, Founder/CEO
The design of the new comfortable and homey space nods to both the company’s humble beginnings and the mission of the company. Two large work cafes, located on the 6th and 11th floors, feature cafe and bar height tables, comfortable couches, and residential design touches that provide spaces for concentrated work and informal collaboration/socialization. Both cafes provide a warm and inviting place for staff to work and meet with visitors in a retail-like experience with full coffee bars inspired by favorite neighborhood haunts near their original office, the founder’s apartment. The 6th floor work cafe is located adjacent to the office reception and provides an instant entrée into the Instacart culture of comfort and accessibility. Visual access between the spaces removes hierarchy and allows visitors to immediately feel “at home” in the space. The 11th floor work cafe serves as the all-hands and special events space for the office and is lined by windows on two sides with expansive Bay Views. Small Conference rooms adjacent to the all-hands space provide opportunities for quick breakouts.