All News
Welcome to the Golden Age of Grocery Shopping
Shoppers at Schnucks, a St. Louis–based chain, will soon say good-bye to storewide odysseys for Stove Top stuffing or ghee or toothpicks. Fifteen stores will be outfitted with start-up Simbe Robotics’ Tally shelf-scanning bots. The bots check for low stock or misplaced items by snapping high-res pics of every square inch of shelf space as they traverse aisles. The benefit for customers is the 3-D map that’s generated. “It gives you X, Y, and Z coordinates of every product within a few centimeters,” Schnucks’s chief information officer Bob Hardester explains. “We can tell a customer they’re looking for a product that’s on aisle three, section two, row four, on the left side, and it’s the fifth item.”
It’s all going to make finding something easier. “If we see a customer is just dwelling forever in the same aisle, we can send someone over to help them,” Hardester explains. Tracking movements also lets them make better customer recommendations, he adds: “The advantage digital sellers like Amazon have is they know every single item you look at, and for how long. This is a way for brick-and-mortar stores to catch up.”
Read more at Grub Street.
Ready to see Simbe in your store?
With Store Intelligence, your teams can focus on delivering exceptional shopper experiences—while technology handles the tedious, time-consuming tasks.
