As frictionless checkout technology pioneer Grabango takes steps to move beyond its roots as a startup and positions itself to provide a payday for its investors, the retail-focused artificial intelligence company expects that grocers will play a key role in powering its growth, its top executive said.
While Grabango has to date only officially announced partnerships with convenience stores, the firm is working with large food retailers to deploy its technology and believes that the grocery sector could ultimately account for the majority of its revenue, CEO Will Glaser said in an interview.
“We launched convenience stores first because [it’s less challenging], but we’re fully embraced in both areas,” Glaser said.
Grabango’s technology is in place in at least one store operated by Aldi, but Glaser said he could not comment on the companies’ arrangement. He said, however, that Grabango is working with grocers he described as “large organizations” and would be releasing details about what it is doing in the months to come.
Grabango’s convenience store partners include Circle K and supermarket chain Giant Eagle’s GetGo c-store division.
“The company's founding mission has always been grocery stores. We made partnerships and announced partnerships first with convenience stores before grocery stores, but we never lost sight of grocery as a full 50% or more of our business,” Glaser said.
“We plan to be a material player in the economics of transferring food from suppliers to consumers,” he added. “Retailers seem to really like it. We're good at it. And we're heading in that direction, and the scale opportunity is enormous.”
Glaser confirmed a report by Axios last month that Grabango plans eventually to go public, although he said the company has not determined when it might be ready to hold an IPO or what valuation it would seek.
“Our plan is not to be acquired,” Glaser said. “There's a lot of things we're trying to do and we think we do them better as an independent company.”
Glaser said Grabango, which laid off an unspecified number of employees last September, has shifted its focus from primarily developing its technology to becoming more sophisticated at marketing it to retailers.
“We’re at the stage now where the technology works, and so we’re doing refinement more than building,” Glaser said. “We’re pivoting away from being an engineering company towards being an operations and sales company.”
Other companies in the frictionless checkout space include Amazon, Standard AI, Zippin and Trigo.
Grabango earlier this month hired John Hyun, a software industry veteran with experience helping companies go public, to serve as CFO.
“There are a lot of things that are terrific tailwinds for the company and part of my mandate is not only to professionalize the organization, but also to implement a series of processes and documentation and control and all that fun financing stuff to help prepare the company for long-term growth,” Hyun said in an interview.
