ShopRite, Fairway Market stores rolling out Caper smart shopping carts

Instacart is boosting the East Coast presence of its Caper Cart smart shopping cart.

Shoppers at ShopRite of Spotswood, New Jersey, can now fill their carts using Caper Cart, San Francisco-based Instacart said Thursday. Plans also call for Fairway Market in Manhattan's Kips Bay neighborhood to get the intelligent cart in the coming weeks.

Piloted by ShopRite parent Wakefern Food Corp., Caper’s artificial intelligence-powered cart enables shoppers to scan items they select off store shelves and pay for them directly through the cart, eliminating the need to wait at checkout. 

"We're delighted to work with Instacart to bring this innovative technology to our customers at some of our stores," Cheryl Williams, chief information officer at Wakefern, a retailer-owned cooperative whose banners include ShopRite and Fairway Market. "Our goal is to offer our customers the best possible shopping experience, and the new, enhanced Caper Cart streamlines the shopping and check out process while offering new opportunities to engage with customers at the point of purchase.” 

Driven by AI and computer vision technology, the latest Caper Cart builds on existing deployments at other stores and is slimmer, lighter and holds 65% more groceries than the previous version, according to Instacart, which acquired Caper Inc.'s smart shopping cart and Caper AI tech platform in 2021. The newest version of the cart also offers stacked charging, meaning retailers don’t have to charge carts individually or swap out batteries.

Once activated, shoppers can link their ShopRite loyalty account directly to the screen to apply digital coupons to the Caper Cart technology.

"Customers' shopping preferences are rapidly evolving, demanding greater convenience and personalization in physical stores. To meet these changing expectations, we’re committed to developing innovative solutions that connect the best of online shopping with in-store technologies, creating a truly unified shopping experience," said David McIntosh, vice president and general manager of connected stores at Instacart. "We’re thrilled to extend our partnership with Wakefern Food Corp. by bringing our newest Caper Carts to the ShopRite of Spotswood and Fairway Market in New York City.”