As Instacart works to bring its technology to more grocery stores, the company is looking to smart carts to help lead the way.
The company, which continues to depend heavily on its legacy e-commerce business to drive revenue, expects to have “thousands” of its screen-equipped carts, called Caper Carts, in supermarkets by the end of 2024 and “could scale to many more,” CEO Fidji Simo said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call last week.
“Retail is really excited about Caper Carts because it becomes a completely new incremental line of business for them,” Simo said.
The carts’ ability to display targeted advertising to shoppers is a central reason why Instacart is so bullish about their potential to help drive growth, Simo said, noting that the company is continuing to work with grocers including Kroger, Wakefern Food Corp. and Schnuck Markets to test the equipment.
Instacart entered the smart cart business in 2021, when it acquired Caper Carts for $350 million. The company offers the carts to grocers through its Connected Stores initiative.
The Caper Carts will soon have the capability to display real-time offers to shoppers based on where they are in the store, items they have already selected and what the equipment knows about their preferences, Simo wrote in a letter to shareholders that accompanied the company’s latest quarterly results last week.
Simo noted in the letter that shoppers spend 30 minutes on average with the carts and are sometimes “seeking out stores with our carts even if they’ve never shopped there before.”
Data from Schnucks shows that the carts have handled more than 10% of sales on busy days at a store where only 10 Caper Carts were deployed along with around 160 traditional carts.
Schnucks shoppers who use smart carts tend to buy more items than people who don’t use the carts, Simo said during the call.
“We have been really obsessed over the consumer reaction, very encouraged by it, and that’s why you are seeing us really pour more fuel on Caper and seeing retailers very excited to deploy [the carts],” Simo said.
