Grocery stores are always trying new things hoping it’ll be the next big thing, but usually it doesn’t catch on.
When I was a kid back in the 1980s and '90s, they would add a small digital calculator to the handle of the shopping cart to help people figure out how much they were spending. It wasn’t useful to people, so it disappeared.
Then they used to have the live lobster tank back in the deli. Turns out, most people don’t want to buy live lobster at a budget grocery store in a working class neighborhood.
Then around 2000, stores started expanding significantly to become a One-Stop shop. Bragging that you could buy a pair of shoes and fresh produce all in one place. It sounded kind of stupid, but it caught on in a huge way! Walmart have been the best at implementing this model, but others like Fred Meyer did it first.
Then they started to implement the curbside pickup. Which was totally dead and nobody used it in an absolute failure… Until the pandemic hit, and a bunch of people tried it, and realized they liked it.
So the next thing? Sounds like goofing around with AI in their app. Will it be useful? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Ladies and gentlemen… FROM the company that brought us “Cadillac CUE” (all-capacitive-buttons information controls)…
…Something nobody wants!