Top 9 Best Grocery Affiliate Programs for 2024

Grocery affiliate programs might not be at the top of the minds of some digital marketers. After all, why promote something people need everyday? Anyone can access these products at neighborhood stores, right?

Wrong! Consumer behavior is changing. Many are now shopping online, including groceries, and having these products delivered to their doorsteps. Affiliates are in the best position to cater to this growing need. And with an $8.695 trillion industry, money-making opportunities are ripe for the picking.

So, which programs should you pick this year? We have nine of the best grocers for you.

Top 9 Highest-Paying Grocery Affiliate Programs for 2024

Amazon Associates (Amazon Fresh)

Amazon is the undisputed leader in the online marketplace, offering over 350 million products across tens of categories from nearly 10 million merchants. And yes, even grocers!

Shoppers can check Amazon Fresh for the best deals in groceries. And if they prefer buying items in person, customers can visit any of Amazon’s 40 Fresh stores across the US. Three out of 20 British shoppers use the service to restock on common household items.

But is Amazon worth promoting?

Did you know 48 million shoppers use this platform to order groceries online and have them delivered to their homes? And these numbers are only American shoppers.

Hence, the opportunity is ever-present at Amazon.

And since we’re talking about the world’s largest e-commerce brand, you can affiliate with other merchants. For example, you could partner with a luxury watch seller and enjoy a heftier 4% commission than Fresh’s 1%.

Sadly, Amazon persists in limiting its cookie lifespan to 24 hours, while others are more “forgiving” with 7 to 60 days.

Still, affiliating with an industry giant makes sense.

Instacart

San Francisco-based Instacart makes online shopping more convenient for families, individuals, groups, and other entities. It’s like having a personal shopper buying the items from your list.

Although Instacart’s offerings are not as extensive as Amazon’s, they’re enough to support households’ daily or weekly requirements.

The platform has food items (fresh & frozen), pantry products, baked goods, dairy, delis, meats & meat alternatives, fresh produce, and even organic grocery.

Instacart also provides gifts, convenience items, baby supplies, beauty products, electronics, flowers, ready meals, automotive supplies, household essentials, personal care, and more.

The best part? Instacart guarantees same day grocery delivery.

Instacart calls its affiliates “tastemakers.” Your job is to inspire your audience to try your food recommendations and complete the ingredients list using Instacart.

Of course, you can always promote other Instacart offerings. After all, Instacart has a thriving relationship with national & regional wholesalers and local retailers (i.e., Costco, Rainbow Grocery, Bi-Rite Market, Lowe’s, and Smart & Final).

Note that Instacart requires a $10 minimum payout threshold, which the platform pays through PayPal and automated clearing house (ACH).

It’s still better than Amazon Associates’ $100 minimum.

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Gourmet Food World

Sourcing gourmet foods like Wagyu, foie gras, caviar, game meats, specialty cheeses, and other fine-dining ingredients is never easy. Chefs, restaurateurs, and kitchen managers often travel worldwide to get the best products.

Gourmet Food World to the rescue!

This company has been helping the fine-dining industry buy the finest ingredients for fancy meals since 2001. And that counts!

With over two decades of impeccable service to leading restaurants, affiliating with Gourmet Food makes perfect sense.

It’s one of the well-paid affiliate programs, offering affiliates a hefty 10% commission. And take note, the products are very high-end. Product costs can amplify your earning potential.

Commissions aren’t the only selling point for Gourmet Food’s affiliate strategy. Its 60-day cookie duration is also noteworthy. Moreover, you can promote Gourmet Food’s other platforms – Gourmet Food Store, Gourmet Wholesaler, and Steaks & Game.

You can promote Gourmet Food’s offerings to chefs, specialty food stores, hotels, pastry shops, restaurants, and bakeries.

Your earning opportunities are boundless.

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Home Chef

Being a home cook is never easy, especially if you’re also busy with work. Sometimes, you want to prepare a sumptuous feast for the family, but work stress makes you forget some crucial ingredients.

Home Chef fixes that by offering home cooks over 30 delicious meals they can customize to meet their discerning taste buds. The platform also features 18 extras to wow the family.

And Home Chef delivers all the ingredients for such meals right to the home cook’s doorstep. All that’s left is the preparation and cooking.

Delighting families and guests should be a cinch with this company. And you can leverage that by joining Home Chef’s affiliate program.

Signing up is easy enough because Home Chef uses Commission Junction to manage its affiliate applications, marketing campaigns, and performance tracking. This affiliate network is one of the pioneers in the industry, with an unquestionable reputation.

Home Chef offers a $10 fixed affiliate commission, which some marketers prefer over a percentage share. Unfortunately, other programs offer a higher flat rate.

Still, Home Chef’s home cook-boosting meals are worth promoting.

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Thrive Market

Thrive Market makes leading a healthy lifestyle with its thoughtful selection of healthy products. Nick Green, Sasha Siddhartha, Kate Mulling, and Gunnar Lovelace established this company in 2014 with a single purpose – help others live healthier.

This brand evaluates its offerings for sustainability and quality, while ensuring affordable prices for ordinary families and individuals before displaying them on virtual shelves.

It has over 5,000 ethically-produced, organic, and sustainable products, with prices up to 30% lower than other stores. And if customers opt for recurring auto-ship deliveries, they enjoy an extra 5% to 10% discount from their shopping carts.

ThriveMarket even gives full-size gifts and exclusive deals!

You can share this information to your audiences to increase the chances of converting them into ThriveMarket customers.

Joining this platform lets you enjoy anywhere between $5 and $40 commissions for every successful transaction. You’ll also get ample and timely support for your marketing campaign.

You don’t need additional convincing.

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FreshDirect

Established in 2002, FreshDirect is an online grocery delivery service covering the greater New York City metropolitan area. The platform also has seasonal deliveries to the Jersey Shore and New York’s Long Island.

You might think FreshDirect’s limited coverage is counterproductive. While that might be true, affiliates must appreciate FreshDirect’s philosophy.

This brand prioritizes freshness by sourcing its products from fisheries, dairies, and farms nearest its Bronx facility. It’s the only way it can justify the “Fresh” in its brand name.

Of course, FreshDirect also provides popular grocery brands. And the best part is this platform delivers the products to customers’ doors. Few New York City metropolitan area grocery stores offer such a service.

And get this!

Although its service area coverage is limited, you can still promote FreshDirect to nearly 20 million people. That’s the 2021 population of the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolis.

FreshDirect also offers customers excellent deals and products on sale. They could use a coupon code to save as much as 25% on some offerings.

Now, that’s worth affiliating with, although its cookies could benefit from a 30-day upgrade.

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Blue Apron

Founded in 2012, Blue Apron is like Home Chef, delivering high-quality ingredients for home cooks, families, and groups to create stunning and delicious meals for everyone.

Blue Apron curates only the finest ingredients in the correct proportions to deliver a meal kit worthy of culinary applause. It has over 70 weekly meal options prepared by professional chefs.

More importantly, four of five ingredients are fresh from the farm or food producers. And you can communicate that to your audiences.

It’s the perfect affiliate platform for food bloggers, recipe websites, health & fitness sites, and cooking shows.

You can join Blue Apron by signing up with CJ Affiliate. This network handles your affiliate campaigns, including monitoring leads and sales, ensuring you are rewarded for your hard work.

Although Blue Apron’s commission is lower than Thrive Market’s $40 maximum, you have many opportunities to earn. For example, you’ll get $15 for each gift card sale.

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HelloFresh 

Did you know you could earn about AU$ 5,700 monthly by converting 100 leads to HelloFresh customers? That’s about $3,600-plus.

This meal delivery kit service changes how customers eat. They source high-quality ingredients only from reputable producers, while considering families and individuals’ budgetary constraints.

As of 2023, HelloFresh has over seven million customers, netting 1.8 billion Euros from delivering over a billion well-thought-out meals.

Affiliating with HelloFresh is a breeze. You’ll enjoy bonuses, vouchers, exclusive offers, creatives, affiliate support, brand collaboration, and marketing artwork to boost your campaigns.

Surprisingly, HelloFresh has a peculiar affiliate marketing commission system. Although its affiliate partner is Impact Radius, the platform observes varying rates. For instance, UK affiliates can enjoy 25% per sale, while Aussies get AU$19, and Canadians receive CA$20 per sale.

These attractive commissions and other perks are enough motivation to make any affiliate join the program.

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BistroMD

Ed (the Foodie) and Caroline (the MD) Cederquist established BistroMD to help people lead a healthy lifestyle.

Although the brand’s offerings center on weight loss, it also provides other food-centric programs (i.e., keto, diabetic-friendly, gluten-free, menopause, heart-healthy, and men’s & women’s health).

BistroMD even has food for vegans, allowing people on this diet to optimize their nutrition goals and maximize wellness.

Subscribers to BistroMD’s program receive 5-minute ready-to-eat meals. They can choose from over 150 meals prepared by a professional chef, including essential and tasty snacks to help customers optimize their weight loss objectives.

Joining BistroMD requires an Impact account. Embed the affiliate link in your digital content and trust Impact’s smart tracking technology to ensure fair earnings.

Bistro MD allows affiliates to use newsletters and social media to promote the company’s weight loss meal kits.

At least, you’ll have more chances of generating a commission.

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What are Grocery Affiliate Programs and How Do They Work?

Grocery affiliate programs are a marketing strategy for companies to reach more customers, leveraging other people’s (affiliates) networks to boost grocery-related revenues.

It’s like traditional marketing, except the grocery business doesn’t use its employees to promote products. Grocers “hire” or “partner with” affiliates to drive traffic into their websites for customers to shop.

Grocers pay the affiliate a fee or commission percentage for every grocery product they “sell” through unique links.

Affiliate sales and marketing programs emphasize output. Although traditional marketing also focuses on results, businesses “pay” marketers whether they hit the objectives or not because they are employees of the organization.

Hence, traditional marketing is less cost-effective for grocers. They pay people regardless of sales.

Meanwhile, affiliate strategies require the grocery business to compensate marketers only when they produce sales.

So, how does this program work?

We can consider affiliates as a grocer’s third-party “business partners.” They are website owners, podcasters, social media influencers, digital creators, bloggers, vloggers, and others with a significant internet presence and substantial reach.

Affiliates write or produce content about an extensive range of products a grocer offers. When audiences (i.e., readers, followers, subscribers, and viewers) like what they see, they click on a link in the digital content.

This action brings them to the grocery company’s website. At the same time, the link “drops” a cookie (a unique tracker) in the audience’s browser to help establish sale attribution and commissionability.

Suppose the audience buys a grocery item on the company’s website. The grocer validates the transaction and shares a percentage of the sale with the affiliate.

And that’s how you, as an affiliate, can make money out of these programs.

What Makes Grocery Affiliate Programs a Good Choice?

Almost any niche is an excellent money-making opportunity. However, groceries are on another level because they cater to humankind’s essential needs for everyday life. The following three reasons should motivate you to join.

A massive industry

Grocery is one of the greatest affiliate marketing niches. While other markets are only worth billions of dollars, the grocery niche has an $8.695 trillion value as of 2022.

And with the world’s ever-expanding population, it’s unsurprising if the grocery industry will surpass 2030 expert projections of $14.772 trillion.

With a massive market comes rich opportunities for making money.

It’s growing more sophisticated

Approximately one in two Americans perform online grocery shopping, with experts predicting the number will grow in the coming years.

Does it matter?

Affiliates leverage their digital presence and clout. You don’t go out in the streets, malls, parks, or public places to promote grocery items. You drive customers via blogs, emails, videos, webinars, podcasts, and social media posts – all digital content.

And roughly 150 million Americans shop groceries online. That’s your target audience!

Modern grocery shoppers love convenience and affordability, which more sophisticated grocers can provide.

Shoppers could compare the online retail price of a grocery item to its in-store value without going to the store. And if the prices are lower in-store, shoppers could drive and shop in person.

You’re helping others

Of the 63,000-plus groceries in the US, 21.7% are local and independent, meaning they are your average neighborhood retail stores.

And you can help these small businesses by introducing them to bigger grocers, especially those with a wholesale club. They can enjoy higher discounts on bulk items, improve inventory, and boost local sales.

You will also help individuals and families without time to shop groceries. These platforms can deliver the goods right in customers’ doorsteps.

How to Select a Suitable Grocery Affiliate Program? 

Knowing why the grocery niche is excellent for affiliates is one thing. Choosing from thousands of grocers is another. So, how should you select a suitable program? The following tips should clear the way.

Evaluate the company’s reputation

Affiliates spend years building trust and nurturing relationships to grow and expand their audiences and followers. No affiliate should sacrifice their reputation by partnering with an “untrustworthy” grocery brand.

Unfortunately, evaluating a grocer’s reputation isn’t as easy as it sounds. You might want to use online resources to establish a brand’s trustworthiness.

For example, does it have a favorable TrustPilot rating? How about its Better Business Bureau rating? You can also check Google Business Profile, TrustRadius, OpenTable, Angi, Yelp, and other reputation management platforms.

Assess product quality

Some people think that reputable businesses only offer high-quality products and services. Unfortunately, even trustworthy brands can make “bad decisions.”

Assessing product quality is vital for a successful affiliate campaign, while retaining (and boosting) your trustworthiness to audiences and followers.

The best way to do this is by sampling the offering. Some brands offer samples to affiliates, allowing them to evaluate the product personally.

If that’s not possible, you can check customer reviews and reputable online product review platforms (i.e., Consumer Reports, Good Housekeeping, BuzzFeed, Foursquare, WireCutter, and Amazon Reviews).

Study the commission structure

No affiliate should settle for “mediocre” commission rates. You’ll want a grocery company that provides the most attractive commission.

Moreover, you’ll want to know what “action” the grocer considers “commissionable.” For example, most grocery brands need a sale before they pay a commission. Others are content with driving traffic as leads.

Consider the payout terms

Can you withdraw earnings any time, or do you need a minimum amount? Does the grocer pay through multiple methods, or is it only via PayPal?

What are Grocery Affiliate Programs that Beginners Should Join?

Some folks hesitate to join grocery affiliate programs because they find it intimidating as beginners. However, like anything else, first-time affiliate ventures are challenging. And that’s why newbie affiliates must choose a program that builds their confidence and motivates them to persevere.

So, what programs should beginner affiliates join?

First, joining must be uncomplicated and free. Although programs have affiliate requirements (i.e., an active website or a social media account with engaged followers), these must not be too overwhelming for newbies to comply.

The programs we featured have straightforward signups and minimal affiliate requirements. Beginners should find these platforms ideal.

Second, the grocer’s products must align with the affiliate’s niche.

For example, Instacart is a perfect fit for home refurbishment digital content, while Gourmet Food is ideal for affiliates focusing on fine-dining and gourmet experiences. BistroMD is great for affiliates of healthy food options.

Third, programs for beginner affiliates must provide adequate support, preferably with a dedicated affiliate management team. After all, newbies require all the guidance, help, and encouragement they need to succeed in affiliate sales and marketing.

Beginner affiliates can also consider a program’s commission and other compensation forms (i.e., bonuses, discounts, and exclusive offerings).

For example, HelloFresh offers a hefty 25% commission, allowing newbie affiliates to earn more.

As for our Top 3, HelloFresh leads the charge because of its 25% commission. BistroMD is also worth considering for its healthy weight loss choices, while Amazon’s wide variety of offerings should be perfect for beginners in the general grocery niche.

FAQs

Is it free to join a grocery affiliate program?

Yes, joining a grocery marketing program doesn’t cost aspiring affiliate partners a dime, even though some platforms (i.e., AWIN) charge a refundable fee.

How can I join a grocery affiliate program?

You can join a grocer’s affiliate platform by reading its affiliate requirements and FAQs before signing up.

Most grocery companies use an affiliate network (i.e., CJ Affiliate, Impact Radius, and ShareASale) to manage the program. These platforms might have a different affiliate requirement. You can check them out before joining.

Some grocers don’t use third-party networks. In such cases, you will want to contact their affiliate management team.

Ideally, you must have an existing (and fully engaged) blog, social media site, or other marketing channels before applying. This requirement is a must because grocers would want to know how you’ll promote and drive traffic to their website.

How much commission can I get when joining a grocery affiliate program?

Commissions from marketing groceries vary across brands. For example, Amazon offers 1%, while HelloFresh gives 25%. Others have a fixed commission between $5 and $40 per sale.

Nevertheless, you can expect the commission to range from 1% to 25%.

In what ways do grocery affiliates get their commission?

Commission payment methods vary across grocery companies. Some use a single channel (i.e., PayPal), while others are more “accommodating,” sending affiliates earnings through direct deposits, wire transfers, checks, and even cryptocurrencies.

Ideally, affiliates should pick a program with multiple payment methods. Should a channel bog down, you can still access the earnings through other means.

How to promote grocery products as an affiliate?

Promoting a wide range of grocery items as an affiliate can be intimidating, especially for first-timers. However, some proven techniques exist.

Affiliates must understand and appreciate the grocer’s offerings to determine how best to convey a message to audiences. They must create and develop content that resonates to readers, viewers, and followers (perhaps something highly relatable or addresses a pain point in their daily lives).

Prioritize adding value to your audience’s lives. They must find the promoted products beneficial in their daily activities. Your persuasive powers (without appearing “salesy”) will be at the forefront of your marketing campaigns.

Once you have a grocery “storyline” to develop, you can embed affiliate links to the content and publish it on your blog, social media channel, and other digital marketing platforms.

Conclusion

Grocery affiliate programs are some of the best, if not THE best, income-generating niches of the modern world. These platforms leverage humankind’s need to live, thrive, and stay healthy every single day.

Although the earning potential is huge, grocery programs demand attention and commitment from affiliate marketers. After all, your commissions are directly proportional to how many sales you produce. And posting sales is next to impossible if you dilly-dally in your marketing campaign.

Focus on your grocery audience and treat them well. Commissions will follow if you have a strong, trustworthy relationship with them.