With only a quarter of the way until 2024, innovations continue to surface in the supermarket industry every day.
At this time, no section of the store has been touched by new technology in any way. Even the parking lots of many major retailers are equipped with AI-powered video surveillance.
Retail media networks, robotic warehouse workers, cashierless checkout, and the proliferation of AI-powered shopping carts that allow customers to bypass checkout lanes entirely are just some of the cutting-edge technologies being implemented in stores across the country. It's just that.
We've been tracking the advancement of these technologies through trade shows, webinars, and good old shoe leather reports to provide the industry with the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available. Here's what we've learned so far:
Amazon is still experimenting
Amazon's grocery market is still in its infancy compared to longtime competitors like Walmart and Kroger, but the retail giant has some of the most advanced technology in the industry, and it's just getting started.
Amazon may be one of those upstarts, but it's clearly a force to be reckoned with, and it has the ability to experiment with ways to keep its competitors up at night.
The online retailer and startup grocer owns more than 500 Whole Foods Market stores and recently made tech news with the introduction of an AI-powered smart cart in San Mateo, California . This is his sixth supermarket, the so-called Whole Foods Market. Dash carts have been introduced.
With this cart, customers log into their Amazon or Whole Foods account, fill a basket with items (it even comes with a produce scale), and walk out of the store. Invoices will be charged directly to the customer's account.
About a month after Amazon released its AI-powered shopping assistant Rufus, the expansion of its smart cart program became a hot topic.
“Rufus is trained on Amazon's product catalog and information on the web to answer customer questions about shopping needs, products, and comparisons, make recommendations based on this context, and facilitate product discovery. “We are a professional shopping assistant,” Amazon said in its fourth-quarter earnings report.
The new assistant has been made available to some shoppers, but the company plans to offer Rufus to all U.S. customers in the coming weeks.
This comes almost exactly one year after Instacart announced plans to release “Ask Instacart,” which combines ChatGPT, Instacart-developed AI, and an extensive list of product data. This feature allows shoppers to ask questions about recipes, meal plans, and other topics.
Smart cart starts moving
Speaking of AI-powered shopping carts, 2024 could be the year of the smart cart. Not only is Amazon making headlines for its smart cart program, but Instacart is also rapidly expanding its own program, giving Amazon a run for its money. 
The San Francisco-based grocery delivery and technology company has signed deals with grocery stores across the country to begin using Caper carts starting this year. That means thousands of smart carts that function similarly to Amazon's carts, using AI and computer vision to aggregate purchases the moment they're placed in the cart, from Fairway Market to Geisler's to ShopRite to Sobeys. This means that they will start appearing in supermarkets such as
Instacart takes technology a step further by making retail media opportunities available right on your cart. The company's smart shopping cart digital ads have been piloted at Good Food Holdings' Bristol Farms supermarket in Southern California since the beginning of this year.
Ads initially consisted of Instacart's CPG partners Del Monte Foods, Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, and General Mills, but these companies are expected to grow as well as the number of stores that can take advantage of digital advertising. .
Big tech companies aren't the only ones paying attention when it comes to smart cart technology. The National Retail Federation Big Show convention in January featured a number of AI-powered shopping cart companies.
Among them was Easy Shopper, a Munich, Germany-based company that builds smart cart technology that can be retrofitted to existing carts. As of January, the company had already installed carts in more than 180 stores across Germany and is setting its sights on U.S. grocery stores.
Autonomous stores attract attention
Computer vision technology is moving beyond the shopping carts of the future and, in some locations, into the stores themselves. Amazon has already tried to tap into this technology with its “Just Walk Out” technology through its Amazon Go convenience store, but the retail giant has struggled to scale the concept.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called for a pause in Amazon Go store expansion in early 2023, but after several months of hiatus, the company opened a new store in metro Seattle in September. But more than seven years after the first Amazon Go opened in Seattle, an estimated 23 stores are now open, according to ScrapeHero.com.
Meanwhile, many other companies, both large and small, are entering the autonomous grocery market. German discount grocer Aldi is testing technology from Berkeley, Calif.-based no-checkout technology company Grabango in one of its Aurora, Ill., stores, and the company is calling the new concept “Aldi Go.” It is branded as “.
Grabango has cameras installed throughout its stores to help customers identify exactly when to add items to their carts.
When I visited the store in early February, it only took about five minutes to download the app and add a credit card. When shoppers are done shopping, they scan her QR code at a kiosk in front of the store and their credit or debit card is charged, without having to scan each item individually.
Aldi hasn't yet spoken publicly about the pilot project, but if the discount grocer's rapid expansion across the U.S. is any indication, the technology could expand quickly.
Computer vision technology may still seem like something out of a sci-fi movie to most shoppers, but some small businesses, like Nourish & Bloom in Fayetteville, Georgia, are It is proving that it is not out of reach for the business of management. The grocery store will be open from January 2022.
More computer vision
Smart shopping carts and automated stores are just a few of the ways computer vision is revolutionizing the modern grocery store.
Already in 2019, Sam's Club introduced its own “Scan & Go” technology that allows customers to bypass checkout lines, giving shoppers the option to scan items with their smartphones. This technology still requires an employee to check the receipt to ensure it matches the item in the basket.
In January, Sam's Club began testing computer vision technology to match receipts to baskets. The company said it aims to have the new technology in as many as 600 clubs by the end of the year.
Computer vision doesn't just work for customers in brick-and-mortar stores. In many large retail stores, AI monitors shoppers even before they enter the store. At the NRF's Big Show convention, Supermarket News spoke with Rod Thomas, chief customer and sales officer for license plate recognition technology company Auror.
Auror works with major retailers like Walmart to help identify customers with a history of behavioral issues as early as possible. “We then match these plates against our database of known violators and send an alert to our store team or operations center, so we know in real time when a violative vehicle returns to our store,” Thomas said. Stated. Interview in January.
Computer vision is also being brought to self-checkout aisles with new technology from checkout terminal maker Diebold Nixdorf, which claims shoppers intentionally failed to scan items or used fake barcodes. We've released a new self-checkout register that lets you know if you've been scanned or not. Just one of several items.
High-tech cash registers can also estimate a shopper's age when purchasing alcohol, allowing those determined to be over 27 to purchase alcohol without an employee checking their ID.
Omnichannel is still growing
The annual results of the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopper Survey, released in January, show that although online grocery sales fell 1.2% year-over-year to $95.8 billion, Competition in the product business has intensified.
Mass merchandisers and hard discount grocers gained market share in 2023, ending the year with an increase of 460 basis points to 45%, behind supermarkets, which declined 390 basis points to 29%.
David Bishop, a partner at Brick Meets Click, said in January that 2023 will be the year for grocery shopping, with rising prices eroding household purchasing power, even though inflation has slowed significantly from its 2022 peak. “These annual results show that conditions have been very difficult for the retail industry.” “Despite the challenges, Pickup continues to prove its appeal to shoppers, even without the benefit of expanded availability or aggressive promotions to support deliveries in 2023.”
But the post-pandemic slump in online sales hasn't hindered Instacart's momentum, and the company is expected to make strategic bets on technology next year. Instacart CEO Fidji Simo said during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call in mid-February that Instacart will cut 250 positions to streamline operations and focus on technology projects.
“All of these new initiatives that have a lot of potential are things we want to be able to fully fund, and that means restructuring the organization and streamlining in certain areas.” she stated.
Meanwhile, DoorDash continues to be under pressure, with CEO Tony Hsu saying on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call in mid-February that the grocery delivery side of its business is growing. said that one in five customers shopped for categories other than restaurants.
Groceries seen from above
This may be the year of the smart cart, but drone deliveries are quietly making inroads, one small delivery at a time. Late last year, we spoke with Shannon Nash, chief financial officer of Google's drone delivery company Wing, about the company's expansion in Texas.
Wing partnered with Walmart last year to create a drone delivery program from two Walmart Supercenter stores in metro Dallas. Nash said the launch of his Wings program at the first Supercenter store made the service available to his 60,000 households in the area. Currently, they can carry around 3 pounds of goods and travel at speeds of 105 miles per hour.
Walmart announced in January that it would expand its drone delivery service, using Wing and another drone delivery company, Zipline, to deliver to 75% of Dallas-Fort Worth's population.
Operating since 2016, Zipline operates on four continents and has completed millions of deliveries.
“In our first few months of delivery to Walmart customers, it became clear that the demand for drone delivery was real,” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said in January. “The response from customers ordering drone delivery from Walmart is incredible every day, and we are now expanding our reach to bring this innovative delivery option to millions of Texans. This is a testament to our partnership. If this milestone is any indication, we believe 2024 will be the year of drone delivery.”
