Instacart is disrupting grocery shopping with games, meal suggestions, ads, store maps, and in-cart checkout — all on its smart Caper Cart.
Why It Hits: There’s probably nothing as lo-tech as the humble shopping cart. So, if Instacart can scale its smart cart to groceries nationwide, it could become one of the hottest companies around.
Between The Aisles: The Caper Cart has a few more bells and whistles than the average shopping cart, including a touchscreen and a payment terminal.
As previously reported, the cart is equipped with cameras, sensors, and a scale so that most items can be tallied and rung up the moment you put them in the cart, so you don’t have to line up at the register.
The carts now have a digital map that lays out the store’s floor plan and where you can find items (bye-bye, aisle numbers?).
The company is testing a gamified feature that shows items you can grab to receive discounts corresponding to items already in your cart.
There’s a “treasure hunt” feature showing when items go on a flash sale and the ability to import your visits so that you can keep a “shopping streak” (think Snapchat for your grocery run).
Checking Out: Instacart has been slowly rolling out the Caper Cart for a couple of years, and it’s apparently tripled the number of them out in the wild during the past six months at various large-chain supermarkets and smaller boutique locations. While selling more of these physical carts could be a big moneymaker, it’s the ability to sell ads for the touchscreen display that’ll likely keep loading up the revenue for years to come.
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