Groceries On Demand

H-E-B teams up with service that delivers hand-picked supermarket items to your home in an hour

Texas grocery giant H-E-B has announced a formal agreement with San Francisco-based Instacart — a grocery delivery service whose personal shoppers hand pick and deliver items from local stores — in Houston and Austin, as well as expanding the service to stores in The Woodlands and Katy.

Instacart already provides service from H-E-B under an informal partnership, but the new agreement solidifies the arrangement and gives users the ability to shop for virtually any product offered at the store, according to the Houston Business Journal.

"Don't have time to come to H-E-B? No problem. We'll bring H-E-B to you with Instacart," said Scott McClelland, president of H-E-B Houston Division, in a press release. "Instacart's ability to deliver on-demand clearly matches our focus of making our customers' lives better. We are excited to offer a larger assortment of H-E-B items to customers in Austin and Houston."

Instacart initially launched in Houston last August and Austin last May. In Houston, customers currently have access to items from Whole Foods Market, Costco — no membership is required — and Petco, in addition to H-E-B. Customers who utilize the service can expect items to be delivered in as little as an hour.

The service, which can be accessed through a phone app or online, is currently available in areas including River Oaks, Bellaire, West University and Memorial, with Katy and The Woodlands as the newest destinations.

New customers can open an account online and receive free delivery and $10 off their first order using promo code HEBLOVE through September 30. Instacart also offers Instacart Express — an annual membership that eliminates delivery fees for all orders of $35 or more — for a fee of $99 per year.

unspecified

space news

European aerospace company touches down with Houston headquarters

Courtesy of The Exploration Company

The Exploration Company is developing the reusable Nyx space vehicle.

European aerospace manufacturer The Exploration Company has established its first U.S. entity and named Space City as its headquarters.

The company announced earlier this month that it has launched TEC Federal to support U.S. government customers and agencies, and to scale The Exploration Company's engineering operations in the country.

Mark Kirasich serves as president of TEC Federal. Kirasich most recently served as the senior director of human spaceflight at Blue Origin after a nearly 40-year career at NASA.

The Exploration Company is developing the reusable Nyx space vehicle. Nyx is designed to take off from any heavy launcher in the world. It will then dock at space stations, retrieve up to 3,000 kilograms of cargo, splash down and return the cargo to Earth. The company aims to make Nyx fully reusable for up to 10 missions, making it a more affordable and sustainable option for aerospace missions.

The Exploration Company completed a successful drop test of the spacecraft in May in the Mojave Desert. The company says Nyx is slated to perform its first flight demonstration in 2028.

In addition to launching the Houston business, The Exploration Company also opened its new Rapid Innovation Lab near Houston's NASA Johnson Space Center on Space Park Drive.

The Rapid Innovation Lab features a full-scale mockup of the future Nyx crew capsule as well as ongoing development and testing of the Nyx cargo capsule, according to the company.

The Exploration Company says the new lab will allow its engineers, designers, and operators to prototype and test crew interfaces. It will also support partnerships with NASA personnel and astronauts.

“Houston gives us direct access to the people and expertise that have built and operated human spaceflight systems for decades. We’re excited to invest and expand around that— engineers, operators, and astronauts working together and moving quickly towards building a crew capsule.” Hélène Huby, founder and CEO of The Exploration Company, said in a blog post.

According to The Houston Chronicle,The Exploration Company has about 30 employees in the Houston area.

The company was founded in 2021 by Huby, a French rocket scientist, and has raised more than $350 million in venture capital. It operates out of Germany, France, Luxembourg, Spain and Italy, with offices in the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates. It is also developing a reusable, high-thrust rocket engine known as Storm.

---

This story was first published on our sister site InnovationMap.

business