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Aisles of Smiles? It's Instacart vs. Male Shopper Memes
Hannah Berner and Antoni Porowski star
You just ordered groceries through Instacart but wound up with … a male shopper. Breathe, people. Everything will be OK. Probably.
The delivery service skewers this familiar meme in a social campaign from in-house agency Local Produce and writer-director Paul Scheer.
Comedian-podcaster Hannah Berner stars with TV personality and bestselling cookbook author Antoni Porowski. Antoni plays a drill sergeant type tasked with whipping shoddy male shoppers into shape.
Hannah frets: “I don’t believe there’s any freaking way these men can be fixed!”
The project is designed to highlight Instacart’s commitment to honing its shoppers’ skills—and trumpeting its rate of success. The brand says it received more than 100 million 5-star ratings in 2025, and that over 90 percent of its rated orders earn perfect customer scores.
But if a few clueless men don’t stack up, Antoni’s there to get shouty and show them the way.
The comedy plays out on minimalist sets, with broad performances and zippy dialogue. It packs live-action cartoon vibes, and debuted with this teaser:
A 3-minute video dropped today:
Antoni: Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Check the date.
Shopper (reaches into cart): These are dates.
Antoni: No, the date on the package.
Shopper: The dates are IN the package.
Never fear, dude wins a prize in the end.
Below, Jasmine Taylor, Instacart’s VP of brand marketing, explains how the initiative came together.
Muse: So, you’re meeting the meme where it lives.
Jasmine Taylor: This campaign is a natural extension of how we show up on social. We look at what’s already moving in culture and in our data, then build stories that feel native to both. The male shopper meme had already taken over the internet. So, instead of watching from the sidelines, we jumped in. The goal was to make something entertaining that also says something real about Instacart’s obsession with quality.
That’s certainly relatable. I think we’ve all been there, frustrated with a shopper.
We have real systems in place to support and improve shopper quality. The key was making sure we engaged in a way that acknowledged people’s frustration with humor and honesty, instead of dismissing it. We think we’ve threaded that needle.
This targets a mainly young-adult audience?
We’ve been evolving toward scripted, narrative content that earns attention instead of buying it. Gen Z is a big reason why. We know their radar for anything that feels like an ad is extremely calibrated. If it smells like a brand trying too hard, they’re gone. So, we wanted to make something entertaining enough to stand on its own, and let the Instacart brand live within that. If it gets shared because it made them laugh or they felt seen, that’s the whole point. Hannah and Antoni were a no-brainer for that, they have organic love from both Millennial and Gen Z audiences.
So, they have cred with the culture…
Hannah was a natural fit because she’s already in this conversation. In fact, she’s been vocal about male shoppers on Giggly Squad, so she came in with a real, established point of view, not a scripted one. Antoni made equal sense from the other direction. He is beloved for his ability to transform how men relate to food and the kitchen. Together they created a dynamic that made the premise feel both credible and funny. It felt like the right people who already had opinions about this topic in culture.
When folks watch the campaign, what’s the brand takeaway?
We want people to feel seen. The memes exist because grocery shopping is hard to get right. And when it goes wrong, it’s frustrating. The first thing we wanted to do was say… yeah, we get it. But the second takeaway is just as important: We don’t want people to think the meme is the reality. The truth is, over 90 percent of rated orders earn a perfect customer rating. We’re proud of that. And we’re also not satisfied with it. That 10 percent gap is something we’re actively working to close, it’s where we’re putting our energy. The feeling we want to leave people with is that Instacart takes this seriously, has already built something worth trusting, and isn’t going to stop until we get it all the way right.
Related: Instacart Super Bowl Ad Stars Ben Stiller and Benson Boone
