Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Caper

Instacart Brings Caper’s AI-Powered Checkout to Fenway as It Transforms Into a ‘Retail Enablement Platform’ Company

Last fall, Instacart acquired smart checkout startup Caper AI as it looked to bulk up its technology solutions to offer retailers who want to enable contactless checkout. This week, the company has relaunched Caper’s system and announced one of its first locations for the system: Fenway Park.

Instacart is making its Fenway debut thanks to Aramark’s Sports and Entertainment, the same group that helped Bartesian’s automated bartender gain entry into the luxury suite in different ballparks this season.

Physically, the Caper Counter looks to be no different than the product Caper offered as a solo company. The only difference is Instacart now owns it. The system uses computer vision and sensors to identify items based on shape, color, size, and other features. The customer can load up to ten items into the Caper Counter at a time.

When Instacart acquired Caper last fall, I suggested that the acquisition looked to be part of an effort by the company to transform itself into a digital platform arms dealer as more grocery providers looked to make online grocery one of their core competencies and questioned whether Instacart’s online grocery service was disintermediating them from their customers.

From my post:

…as Instacart grows its enterprise technology solutions, I expect we’ll increasingly see its flagship shopper service decoupled from its technology as it looks to serve larger retailers who want greater control over the customer relationship. Since the start of the pandemic, many grocery retailers have started to roll out and standardize around their delivery services, which means a fast-growing market for technology solutions. My guess is that Instacart is anticipating this as it rolls up some of the best-in-class independent solution providers as it prepares for an IPO soon.

This effort to transform itself is precisely what is happening. Over the past month, the company announced the Instacart Platform, a suite of technology offerings for grocers and retailers to help them with digital transformation. The company has also changed how it describes itself. At the time of the acquisition last fall, the company called itself ‘the leading online grocery platform in North America.‘ In today’s announcement, the company has swapped the term online grocery platform company for what it calls a retail enablement platform “that works with grocers and retailers to transform how people shop.”

For those who want to see the Caper Counter in action, the automated checkout system will be available at three different locations at Fenway Park starting today.

Instacart Acquires Smart Cart and Grocery Checkout Technology Startup Caper AI

Today Instacart announced they had acquired Caper AI, a smart cart and grocery checkout technology company. Instacart confirmed to Techcrunch they paid $350 million for the company.

In Caper AI, Instacart acquires a portfolio of automated checkout and smart cart technology solutions, many of which are deployed in major national grocery retailers across North America. One such retailer is Kroger, which began deploying “KroGo Powered by Caper” smart shopping carts at a store in Kroger’s hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, earlier this year.

Caper’s latest generation smart carts feature machine vision that allows shoppers to place the items in the cart and bypass counter checkout altogether.

Caper also has an automated checkout solution targeted towards smaller format stores. The company’s AI Counter utilizes a scale and machine vision to recognize up to 10 items and automate the checkout process.

According to the announcement, Instacart plans on integrating Caper’s technology into the Instacart app as well as both its in-store and online experiences for its grocery partners. One interesting potential application hinted at is a shoppable recipe integration with Caper’s smart carts: “Over time, Instacart expects to integrate Caper’s technology into the Instacart app and the ecommerce websites and apps of its retail partners, allowing customers to build online shopping lists and browse recipes ahead of time and check off their lists as they go. And, for Instacart shoppers who shop on behalf of customers, they can also utilize the carts to find items more efficiently and bypass long checkout lines.”

With the move, Instacart adds another tool to a growing arsenal of e-commerce and in-store technology solutions targeted towards grocery providers at a time many are beginning to question their relationship with the company. Over the past decade, Instacart has provided many grocery chains an easier glide path for moving into e-commerce and in-store shopping automation, areas with steep learning curves that grocers with tight margins have historically been more than happy to outsource. However, some grocers see Instacart’s in-store shopping service as taking too big a cut and possibly disintermediating them in the process.

However, as Instacart grows its enterprise technology solutions, I expect we’ll increasingly see its flagship shopper service decoupled from its technology as it looks to serve larger retailers who want greater control over the customer relationship. Since the start of the pandemic, many grocery retailers have started to roll out and standardize around their delivery services, which means a fast-growing market for technology solutions. My guess is Instacart is anticipating this as it rolls up some of the best-in-class independent solution providers as it prepares for an IPO soon.

In short, this move and others are part of Instacart evolving into a more diversified omnichannel grocery technology arms dealer.

Kroger Using Smart Shopping Carts Powered by Caper

With the news last week that grocery giant, Kroger is using Caper’s technology, smart shopping carts are now officially a thing to watch out for.

Winsight Grocery Business broke the news last week that Kroger has quietly started testing its new “KroGo Powered by Caper” smart shopping carts at a store in Kroger’s hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. The high-tech shopping carts feature a touchscreen, barcode scanner and scale that allow for a more automated checkout process.

Shoppers scan the barcode of items they place inside the cart, which automatically keeps track of everything being purchased (there are safeguards in place is a user tries to put something in without scanning it). Produce and other fresh items are weighed on the built-in scale on the cart. If an item is removed, the user manually deletes it from the running list on the touchscreen. KroGo users have a separate checkout station that communicates with the cart to automatically tally up the total bill shoppers pay.

Interest in this type of automated checkout has accelerated thanks to COVID-19 pandemic. Automated checkout removes the cashier from the grocery shopping experience, eliminating a vector of human-to-human interaction. This is particularly important when it comes to keeping the spread of germs in check, given how many different people a cashier interacts with on a daily basis.

But Caper Co-Founder and CEO, Lindon Gao, told me by phone this week that his company’s smart cart technology got a boost from another source: his competition. “Amazon Dash has really brought this concept more to the market,” Gao said, speaking of Amazon’s own smart cart tech, “It has validated what we have done all along.”

In addition to adapting to new pandemic realities and the shot of validation from Amazon, the retailers Caper are working with also want to enhance the shopper’s experience. And according to Gao, Caper’s built-in touchscreen on the cart does just that.

“The screen is the holy grail,” Gao said. That’s because shoppers don’t need to download an app in order to use the automated checkout. Everything is there on the cart. Additionally, Gao said that people most people don’t shop while looking at their phones, but the on-cart screen travels with them up and down the aisles.

The screen also provides new advertising and promotional real estate for the retailer. A store can advertise specials, upsell companion items (frozen pizza + ice cream!), and push out possible recipes based on what’s in the cart.

Moving automated checkout to the cart can also mean faster adoption by retailers. Other cashierless checkout solutions like those from Grabango and Zippin require stores to be retrofitted with cameras and sensors. That can take time and be costly, especially for larger stores. A retailer adopting smart carts just needs to deploy new carts and don’t require shoppers to download an app to make the automated checkout work.

As such, there are actually quite a few players in the smart cart space. In addition to Caper, Veeve, Storewide Active Intelligence, Tracxpoint, and Imagr, all have various takes on the technology coming to market.

Given all this activity, smart shopping carts are definitely a thing we’ll be watching out for this year.

Caper’s New Counter Device Gives Cashierless Checkout to Convenience Stores

Caper, the startup best known for making smart shopping carts for cashierless checkout at supermarkets, today announced its latest product, the Caper Counter.

Meant for convenience and other small store formats, the square-shaped device sits on a counter and shoppers place items in it. Using five built-in cameras along with computer recognition and artificial intelligence, the Counter recognizes all of the items and tallies up the cost. Customers then use a mobile payment system or credit cart to purchase the items and go.

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven demand for more contactless payment options to reduce human-to-human contact in retail. Caper’s pitch to retailers is that its cashierless solution is easier to set up and running than other players on the market. While competitors like Grabango and Zippin require cameras and sensors to be installed around a store, Caper moves all of its cashierless smarts into smaller devices like shopping carts and now the Counter, so there’s no need for an expensive full store retrofit.

Caper’s move comes at a time when the smart shopping cart space is getting crowded. Companies like Veeve, Tracxpoint, and SAI all offer similar functionality to Caper’s cart. And, not for nothing, Amazon recently announced that it has developed its own Dash smart shopping cart and is looking to license out its cashierless checkout tech to other retailers.

When I spoke with Caper Founder and CEO Lindon Gao last week about the Counter and competition in the smart cart space, he was not that concerned. “A couple of main advantages is that we have a hardware and supply chain in China,” Gao said. “We’re already integrated with a lot of these retailers, and being not Amazon certainly helps.”

The Caper Counter is also indicative of the ways technology is making convenience stores more convenient. C-stores are actually a nice proving ground for technologies like cashierless checkout because they are smaller and stock fewer items. They are also stores that people don’t want to spend a lot of time in, so technology that gets people in and out quickly will find a receptive audience.

Gao said that right now the Caper Counter is already in use at several locations with an undisclosed national-level convenience brand partner. Caper wouldn’t reveal specific pricing for its Counter, saying that there is one model where the store pays for the hardware as well as a software fee, with costs dependent on the size of deployment.

Caper to Bring its Cashierless Checkout Smart Carts to Sobeys in Canada

Caper announced today that its cashierless checkout-enabling smart shopping carts will be deployed to the Sobeys chain of grocery stores in North America. Caper will make its debut today at the Sobey’s Glenn Abbey in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

Unlike other cashierless shopping startups that install lots of cameras in ceilings in grocery stores to keep track of what people grab and keep, Caper moves that technology to the shopping cart. Shoppers scan their items as they put them in the cart and get automatically charged as they leave the store.

The advantage to this solution, according to Caper, is that stores can implement cashierless checkout without needing to retrofit their stores. It also scales to larger stores easily, which is something that is more complex with computer vision-based systems. The Oakville Sobeys is 41,000 sq. ft. and Caper’s press announcement didn’t specify how many carts are going live or any timeline for a rollout across Sobeys 1,500 locations. Caper raised $10 million last month and at that time said it would deploy 1,000 carts in the coming year.

With the Sobeys announcement, Caper becomes the latest cashierless tech startup to publicly announce a retail partnership, something most of them had been unwilling to do until recently. Earlier this month Trigo announced a partnership with (and investment from) Tesco. AiFi launched a cashierless NanoStore for Ahold Delhaize in the Netherlands. Zippin partnered with (and received an investment from) Lojas Americanas in Brazil. And Grabango has partnered with Giant Eagle.

All this momentum heading into the end of the year could translate into tipping point, with rollouts of cashierless checkout stores accelerating in 2020.

Caper Raises $10M Series A for its Smart Grocery Shopping Cart-based Cashierless Checkout

Caper, which makes smart shopping carts to facilitate cashierless checkout in grocery stores, announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A round of funding. Lux Capital led the round with participation from existing investors First Round Capital, Y Combinator, Hardware Club, Sidekick Fund, FundersClub and New York-based grocery chain Red Apple. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Caper to $13.5 million.

Caper is unique among the cashierless checkout startups: instead of installing all kinds of high-tech cameras and sensors in ceilings and on shelves, all of that purchasing automation is moved to the grocery cart itself. The advantage for the retailer is that it doesn’t have to spend all that money retrofitting a store and can simply purchase new carts.

The version of the Caper cart currently deployed requires the user to scan an item’s barcode before placing in in the basket. As this promotional video shows, the next iteration of the Caper cart will use a combination of computer vision and sensors to automatically detect and keep track of what is being purchased. The Caper cart also has a built in touchscreen which will be able to recommend recipes, specials on products and even act as a GPS to help a shopper find an item in the store.

Caper Smart Cart - Make Shopping Magic

This has been a transformational year for the cashierless checkout space as startups have received more funding and come out of stealth with retail partnerships. Last month, Zippin announced an investment from Brazillian retailer Lojas Americanas and plans to automate a series of Ame Go convenience stores. In July, Grabango announced it was working with the Giant Eagle grocery chain here in the U.S. And Trigo Vision is working with Israeli chain Shufersal as well as reportedly powering Tesco cashierless checkout.

For its part, Caper says it has processed 10,000 transactions, and plans to deploy 1,000 Caper carts in the coming year.

Given all that news, look for 2020 to be a year where cashierless checkout goes from transformational to more mainstream.

Can Caper’s Smart Shopping Carts Steal Cashierless Checkout Marketshare?

The cashierless checkout space is getting downright frothy these days. Caper came out of stealth and officially threw its hat in the autonomous retail ring today with a public announcement about its technology and news that to date, it has raised $3.5 million from First Round Capital, Y Combinator and others.

Caper’s take on the cashierless checkout shifts the technology emphasis from cameras mounted in the ceiling to an AI-powered smart shopping cart. The current Caper cart requires users to scan an item’s barcode before throwing them into their cart. Future iterations, already in the works, will remove the barcode and will use a combination of computer vision and built-in weight scales on the cart to determine purchases. Once a customer is done shopping, they exit the store and pay on the built-in screen.

The advantage to this, according to Caper’s press announcement, is that grocery stores do not have to retrofit their stores to enable cashierless checkout. Retailers can simply swap out their old shopping carts for the connected Caper ones. The company says that its smart carts are not that much more expensive than traditional ones.

As Caper told TechCrunch, additional benefits include using the attached screen to map stores and guide shoppers to specials or complementary products (Bought ice cream? How ’bout some chocolate sauce on Aisle 3?) or recipe suggestions. Data from the carts can also tell retailers where people are traveling within the store to provide insight on optimal inventory placement.

And while the company didn’t point it out specifically, moving the computer vision to the cart means that it can scale to even the most massive of grocery stores out of the box as the technology only has to monitor what customers place inside.

Having said that, it seems like one drawback to Caper’s approach is requiring shoppers to use a cart in order to work. There are plenty of times when I go into a store and just grab one or two items and carry them out. Presumably, Caper’s technology wouldn’t record that, but permanent ceiling-mounted cameras would see everything, allowing for broader automated shopping scenarios (no carts) while providing retailers more accurate real-time inventory observation/management.

This has certainly been a big week for cashierless checkout startups. This past Monday, Grabango raised $12 million of for its scalable solution that uses lots of small, ceiling-mounted smartphone-sized cameras. And not that long ago, Standard Cognition raised $40 million for its autonomous retail solution.

Caper’s smart carts are already in use by two unnamed grocery store chains, Grabango says it has partnerships with four retail partners, and Amazon will most certainly continue its rapid Go store expansion. All this investment and activity happening now means cashierless checkout will become more mainstream this year.

Caper Smart Cart - Make Shopping Magic