9 Grocery Delivery Fees Texans Don't See Until Checkout

Texans are increasingly letting a delivery app handle their grocery run.

The Federal Trade Commission spent part of May 2026 asking shoppers nationwide to weigh in on hidden fees tied to online grocery and food delivery.

We’re not advocating for free delivery across the board.

Grocery shopping takes time, and employees need to be paid.

However, it’s common practice for stores to hold at least one charge back from the order screen and reveal it only once a shopper is ready to pay.

These are the grocery delivery fees Texans don’t see coming until the total changes in front of them.

Note: This is general information, not financial advice. Delivery and service fees vary by store, market, and membership status, and are subject to change.

1. H-E-B’s Home Delivery Fee

H-E-B doesn’t publish a dollar figure for home delivery anywhere a shopper can find one before checkout.

There’s no dollar figure in advance.

H-E-B’s help center says curbside and delivery orders alike “may be subject to a personal shopper fee and/or a delivery fee” that shifts by location, service time, or promotion, and the retailer only commits to showing the charge “on your checkout page before you submit your order.”

A shopper can fill an entire cart, reach the final screen, and see that fee for the first time with no earlier estimate to weigh it against.

The Last Time H-E-B Printed Its Fees

The last curbside figure H-E-B put in writing was a $2.95 small basket surcharge on orders under $35, announced in May 2021 when the retailer made curbside free at $35 and up.

That number is gone from H-E-B’s help pages today.

The site now covers curbside and delivery in the same breath and says only that the fees “may vary,” leaving a shopper no printed figure to check for either one before the final screen.

2. Walmart’s Below-Minimum Basket Fee

Walmart’s home delivery orders carry a $6.99 minimum order fee any time the cart falls under $35, and that charge lands even on Walmart+ members whose whole reason for the membership is skipping delivery costs.

Walmart calculates that $35 threshold against the delivery order’s subtotal once it reaches checkout, not against a running number a shopper is tracking item by item, so the $6.99 charge shows up folded into the total instead of standing out earlier.

Walmart reinstated the charge in April 2025 for shoppers paying with food-assistance benefits and for Walmart+ Assist subscribers, ending a waiver that had run since the pandemic.

Add one more item worth a few dollars, and the fee drops off the delivery total completely.

3. Amazon’s Flat Fee for Non-Prime Orders

Amazon charges a flat $12.99 delivery fee on its Same-Day grocery service for shoppers without a Prime membership, no matter how small or large the order is.

A shopper ordering a single rotisserie chicken pays the identical $12.99 as one filling a cart for a week.

Prime members pay less: $2.99 on an order under $25, and Amazon says delivery is free above $25 in most areas.

Amazon expanded Same-Day grocery delivery to more than 2,300 cities and towns by the end of 2025, naming Sugar Land among the Texas markets it added, and the flat non-Prime fee rides along with every new one.

4. Instacart’s Service Fee

Instacart tacks on a service fee that sits apart from the delivery fee and separate from any tip, and the company publishes no rate for it at all.

Instacart says the fee varies with location and with the number and types of items in a cart, so two Texans shopping the same Kroger or Randalls order in different cities can watch different numbers appear at checkout.

An Instacart+ membership zeroes out the delivery fee on qualifying orders, but Instacart’s own pages are blunt that service fees still apply, and that line never disappears.

5. Walmart’s Speed Upcharges That Walmart+ Doesn’t Cover

Walmart+ covers the standard store delivery fee, and it stops at standard speed.

Picking Express delivery adds a $10 Express fee that Walmart applies to all orders, and a three-hour window carries its own $6 charge.

Membership doesn’t touch either one.

A Texan who has watched delivery ring up free every week can tap the faster window on a busy afternoon and meet a charge that has never once appeared on the account.

Drop back to the standard window, and the upcharge comes off.

Psst! How many of these hidden grocery delivery charges are you already paying without noticing? Run through this checklist and see where you land.

6. Shipt’s Non-Member Delivery Fee

Shipt charges a shopper without a membership a $10 delivery fee on a one-time order, well above the $7 charge a member pays on an order under $35.

Shipt also notes that a non-member may see a service fee at checkout on top of that.

Shipt’s own fee page confirms the number stays out of view until then: Any charge “will be fully visible at checkout before the order is placed,” never earlier.

Clear $35 and the delivery fee vanishes, but that threshold is a members-only benefit: A non-member pays the $10 no matter how big the order gets.

Target runs its delivery through Shipt in Texas, so that $10 charge follows a Target grocery run just as much as any other Shipt retailer.

7. Shipt’s Alcohol Delivery Surcharge

Shipt applies an extra $7 alcohol fee to orders carrying wine or beer from select retailers where alcohol delivery is offered, stacked on top of the regular delivery charge.

Shipt’s fee disclosure applies here too: The same “fully visible at checkout” promise covers the alcohol surcharge, so the running total during shopping doesn’t reflect it until the final review screen.

Austin, Houston, and Dallas all carry Shipt’s alcohol delivery option.

A six-pack added late in an order can pull that $7 charge into the total a shopper sees only once they reach checkout.

8. Instacart’s Per-Retailer Delivery Fee

Instacart charges a full delivery fee for each retailer in a cart, since the free-delivery perk built into an Instacart+ membership applies per retailer, not per order.

The second store isn’t free.

A Texas shopper who fills one cart with an H-E-B order and a Target order through Instacart can watch two separate delivery charges land on the same payment screen.

Instacart launched a feature called OrderUp in 2022 that let a customer bolt a second retailer’s items onto an order already placed, for a single delivery fee, in the short window after checkout.

It no longer turns up anywhere in Instacart’s help center, and the company’s current pages say separate delivery fees and minimums apply for each store.

9. H-E-B Now’s Delivery-Plus-Service Fee Stack

H-E-B Now, the rapid-delivery service H-E-B runs through the Favor app, carries a delivery fee and a separate service fee stacked on top of it.

Favor puts its standard delivery fee at $6 while saying the amount varies by location and merchant, and neither company publishes a dollar figure for the service fee at all.

Both charges went away for a stretch in 2024, and a lot of Texans still shop on that memory.

When H-E-B Now launched in August 2024, Favor ran it with no delivery or service fees on orders over $25 through the end of that year.

Tips for the runner were never part of the waiver, and neither fee came back with a banner announcing the promotion had ended.

Fee Complaints Have Reached Washington

Grocery delivery fees have already drawn attention well beyond Texas checkout screens.

This isn’t a new complaint.

The District of Columbia’s attorney general sued Instacart in 2020 over what the lawsuit called deceptive service fees the company let customers mistake for driver tips, and Instacart settled that case for $2.54 million in 2022.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened its own comment period in April 2026, asking shoppers nationwide to report hidden charges on grocery and food delivery orders before the window closed on May 18.

The agency’s own announcement pointed to a $60 million Instacart settlement from December 2025 over service fees never disclosed until checkout as one reason behind the new comment period.

That request asked about fees whose purpose or recipient goes unexplained, and about totals that change once a shopper reaches checkout.