Schnucks to deploy new versions of Instacart’s smart carts

Dive Brief:

Schnuck Markets is deploying Instacart’s smart carts, called Caper Carts, adding the carts at select stores in St. Louis this fall ahead of a larger rollout planned for later this year, Instacart announced Wednesday.
Along with using fully automated Caper Carts, Schnucks will also be testing a “Lite” version that lets customers manually scan items before putting them in the cart, the announcement noted. For the first time, certain Caper Carts will have a bottom rack for bulky and heavy items.
The announcement builds on Schnucks’ omnichannel partnership with Instacart as more grocers embrace digital innovation both in-store and online.

Dive Insight:

The smart carts will help the Midwestern grocer address the gap between in-store and online shopping along with leaning into added convenience and personalization, Schnucks and Instacart executives said in the announcement.

"We believe the future of grocery will lean heavily into personalization — whether it's achieved through in-store smart carts or by providing the best possible e-commerce experience for our customers,” Chace MacMullan, Schnucks’ senior director of digital experience, said in a statement.

For Instacart, the Schnucks partnership introduces new versions of its Caper Cart at a time when smart cart makers are looking to provide more value for retailers eyeing the still-nascent technology. Last month, Instacart announced that a new Caper Cart model — the Caper Cart 3 — is available to use at the ShopRite store in Spotswood, New Jersey, and would soon debut at the Fairway Market Kips Bay location in the New York City borough of Manhattan. That model is “slimmer and lighter” and holds 65% more items than the previous model, Instacart said.

Caper Carts use computer vision and artificial intelligence to automatically identify items as customers add them to the cart. Customers can use their Schnucks Rewards account with the cart and checkout on the cart from anywhere in the store, allowing them to skip checkout lanes. Allowing smart cart users to connect their grocery store rewards account, where they can access clipped promotions and view weekly circular deals as they shop, provides a more convenient and personalized experience, Instacart said.

Instacart noted that Caper Carts can be wirelessly upgraded with new features and highlighted that the stacked charging ability saves workers from having to plug in smart carts or handle battery swaps.

The smart carts are the latest addition to Schnucks’ numerous existing Instacart-powered offerings, which include e-commerce properties, ads, electronic shelf labels and the Eversight pricing and promotions solution.

Schnucks first teamed up with Instacart in 2017 on same-day delivery service, the announcement noted.

Good Food Holdings and Foodcellar Market, which has two stores in Queens’ Long Island City neighborhood, have also been testing Instacart’s Caper Carts.

Instacart is up against other smart cart makers who are looking to get their solutions in supermarkets — including companies like Veeve that offer lower-cost versions of the technology that clip onto existing shopping carts. Earlier this year, New York City supermarket chain Morton Williams bought 100 smart carts from Cust2Mate, while Wegmans began testing smart cart technology from Shopic at two stores.

In May 2022, Veeve said Albertsons would add its smart carts to “a few dozen stores” following a pilot in 2021.