[lenley]

Yes - In my view revenue (and probably most accountants would also say this) is the delivery fee only. If you think about it, most marketplaces have this same issue. This isn't unique to Instacart, Enron did the same thing...(our accounting prof used them as an example). It's just not useful for analysis of the company.

Edit: Most marketplaces can charge you the "full price" to keep the transaction on the platform; however, they are only paid a small portion of that transaction as revenue -- e.g. Fiverr/Upwork/etc. don't keep the full amount the service provider charges their client, only a (hopefully) small fee.

https://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/ #6 Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) vs. Revenue "In marketplace businesses, these are frequently used interchangeably. But GMV does not equal revenue!" The rest of A16Z's explanation is worth reading.