If you're like me and always have trouble finding the right pasta sauce, there's a smart shopping cart that can find it for you. Instacart's Caper Cart, which features a touchscreen and payment terminal at the front where you would normally sit your toddler or play Jenga with your products, now features a new store map system that can help you navigate to products, according to that you are looking for. Sell items and even send on pickup quests that help you save. And there are advertisements on it too.
The Caper Carts have been in limited use in select grocery stores for several years; When you drop products in, they are automatically displayed on the screen (except for certain product types) thanks to multiple cameras, sensors and a scale built into the shopping cart. The big advantage of the Caper Cart is that you can import your shopping list from the Instacart app by scanning a QR code on the cart and checkout from the cart without having to wait in line.
In a demo with Caper Cart co-founder Ahmed Beshry, he showed us a new “gamified” feature: When you add an item to your cart, it can show you the location of a second item, which you can grab to unlock further discounts . The map on the cart gave me a dotted path of where to go next, and as the cart moved, the map kept me updated on the location in real time—a bit like I was walking toward a gym Pokémon Go.
The new live map on the Caper Cart appears to be more useful than just the aisle letters and numbers the cart previously provided. But how does the car know where it is? I asked if special beacons or mmWave positioning would be used, but Beshry said the company couldn't share how the positioning works. He said they create a 3D map of the store's interior, similar to how a robot vacuum cleaner maps your apartment.
The shopping cart can also take you on a “treasure hunt” to find lightning deals on items on the map. And to continue investing in the entire digital shopping cart experience in a world where Instacart reigns supreme delivers When you buy groceries, the shopping cart rewards you with credits for repeat visits by going on a “shopping streak.”
Sometimes you need a dip with your chips — and the cart is happy to tell you they match — but sometimes you don't need or want to be asked to pick up a particular company's dip. And while I'd love help finding the pasta sauce on sale, getting stuck in generated recommendations and ads in my shopping cart could be overwhelming.
Still, a shopping cart that can figure out what I put in it, where to find things on my list, that gives me instant coupons, and that allows me to pay without waiting in line at the self-checkout is a future I'd like to try .
Actually finding one of these carts could be a treasure hunt in itself. While the company says it has “tripled our Caper Cart footprint” in the last six months and will soon have “thousands” of them, it doesn't say exactly where you can find them. Markets to be reviewed include Bristol Farms, Fairway Market, The Fresh Grocer, Geissler's Supermarket, Kroger, McKeever's Market & Eatery, Price Chopper, Schnucks and ShopRite in the US and Aldi in Austria.