AI-Powered Shopping Carts Are Here

Will buying groceries ever be the same?

On a recent Tuesday morning, I drove to a ShopRite in Hoboken, New Jersey, for a glimpse of the future. What, you may very understandably wonder, might a decades-old suburban supermarket have to say about where food retail is headed? It’s among the first stores to replace some of its grocery trolleys with Caper Carts — smart shopping carts that, through the power of AI, allow you to skip the checkout line by automatically recording your purchases as you shop. 

Inside ShopRite’s sliding glass doors, I found a bank of a couple dozen Caper Carts at the ready. The carts are produced by the grocery technology company Instacart; each has a touchscreen attached to the handlebar, scanners and cameras positioned at the front and rear of the basket, and a scale built into its chassis. Conscripting one into service was as easy as pressing “start shopping,” and after a 30-second tutorial, I was ready to roll. 

These rigs are heavy, like getting on an e-bike for the first time when you’re used to a bicycle. As I muscled my way from aisle to aisle, barcode scanners logged hummus, crackers, spaghetti, and milk with a pleasing boop when I added them to the shopping bags I had nestled inside (a pro tip illustrated in the tutorial video, which saved me a separate chore at the end of the shop). The touchscreen kept a running tally of my bill. It also displayed a selection of store coupons for items like canned soup, soda, and sports drinks — had I connected the cart to a ShopRite loyalty card, I imagine that the coupons that show up here would have been for things I tend to buy.  

Heavier than it looks

Fresh produce doesn’t typically have a barcode to scan, which meant that buying the broccoli and apples I needed took a little more effort. After bagging up two heads of broccoli, I looked it up by name on the touchscreen. Once in the cart, that built-in scale automatically registered their weight down to the hundredth of a pound and charged me accordingly. 

At the end of my Caper Cart adventure, I still had to visit a self-checkout kiosk and scan a barcode to pay (boo), but the detour was, of course, significantly shorter than had I been scanning individual items there (hooray). According to Instacart, at some retailers, Caper Carts have their own built-in payment modules to cut out the kiosk entirely (big hooray). 

Caper Carts are currently in play at grocers around the country including Fairway Market, Kroger, Price Chopper, and of course, ShopRite. But they’re not the only smart cart on the scene. Amazon debuted its rival Dash Cart back in 2020, and has been slowly rolling those out at Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh stores, mostly in Los Angeles, Chicago, and suburbs throughout the Mid-Atlantic. 

After wrapping up my Caper Cart test drive, I headed to a nearby Amazon Fresh location to see how the Dash Cart measured up. All in all, it was remarkably similar to Instacart’s technology: sensors, camera, scale, touchscreen, equally cumbersome to maneuver. The key difference is that the Dash Cart wants you to scan a barcode on your smartphone to connect your Amazon account before you start shopping. It’s extra work at the outset for anyone without the Amazon app already downloaded, but means that when you’re finished shopping you can roll the cart right out of the store and Amazon automatically bills the credit card on file. 

Today, smart carts are still a niche technology; Amazon and Instacart currently have them at dozens, not hundreds, of store locations. But both say they’re ramping up quickly. What’s driving the spread? Grocers are desperate for a better alternative to the self-checkout kiosk. 

Cast your mind back a decade or so, to a time when living humans were mostly responsible for ringing you up at the end of a grocery shop. The promise of self-checkout was that it would be a win/win for stores and consumers. Grocers would slash labor costs, and because a store can fit several self-checkout kiosks in the place of one traditional checkout line, shoppers would benefit from a shorter wait to pay for their purchases.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. Stores have come to realize that the kiosks are expensive to install, break down frequently, lead to more product loss (a.k.a. theft), and although they cut down on the need for cashiers, they do still need to be staffed, including by higher-wage IT support. 

Once the novelty wore off, customers didn’t like the kiosks, either. And really, why would you? It’s extra labor and frustration being passed on to you, the shopper, without any obvious benefit. Research has shown that the self-checkout reduces customer loyalty, and also causes people to buy fewer items. All these drawbacks means we’re actually now beginning to see retailers phase them out. 

Enter smart carts. Retailers hope that they’ll be less annoying for shoppers, and, yep, help them to sell you more. 

According to Instacart, people buy more when they’re shopping with a Caper Cart, and return to the store more frequently, too. (PSA: If you find yourself returning to the grocery store more often for the thrill of using a smart cart, it is time to look for a hobby.) 

The carts also open up the possibility of targeting customers with location-aware ads while they shop — for instance, serving up a Diet Pepsi coupon to a customer who typically buys Diet Coke, and doing it right when she enters the soda aisle. If a shopper links a store loyalty card to the cart, Instacart can “gamify” the experience by dangling extra rewards geared toward getting her to spend more or shop more frequently. The ability to reach customers with targeted ads and offers while they’re shopping is totally new territory for grocers, and potentially a powerful marketing tool. 

Shoppers stand to benefit in a few ways, too. For one, seeing a running total of how much you’ve spent as you shop makes it easier to stick to a budget, rather than being caught by surprise at the point of checkout. Also, if you’re the type of model citizen who makes a shopping list in your Amazon or Instacart app before heading to the grocery store — instead of, say, scrawling it on the back of whatever piece of scrap paper is floating around in your car — these carts can automatically check items off your list as you shop.    

Smart carts also make it easier to find coupons and discounts that are most relevant to you. This is a feature that, in my opinion, cuts both ways. Coupons exist because they encourage purchases that you might not otherwise make. If you’re a disciplined bargain hunter, they can be a good tool for saving money. If you’re not, the house usually wins.  

But, when all is said and done, smart carts’ clearest selling point for consumers is simply that they can help save you time. These carts are essentially rolling self-checkout kiosks. If you can get over the initial hump of learning how to work them, and you don’t mind that they corner like a Sherman tank, I do think that smart carts reduce friction, save time, and even (dare I say?) add a bit of fun to the shopping experience. 

Still, I can’t help but wonder if there are better solutions out there to the challenge of charging people for their groceries. One example: the UK grocery chain Waitrose & Partners for years has offered a technology called ScanPayGo. When you enter the store, you pick up a wireless scanner gun that you can link to a credit card, take with you around the store to scan purchases as you shop, then leave without stopping to check out. (Now you can even skip the scanner gun, and use ScanPayGo on your smartphone.) If self-checkouts should have taught grocers anything, it's that simplicity always wins.