Instacart has spent the past decade plus revolutionizing the online grocery shopping experience for both consumers and grocery retailers. As Instacart evolved from being primarily a grocery delivery app into a retailer enablement platform, the need for a more unified omnichannel commerce experience became apparent. Instacart’s Connected Stores solves this need, with a collection of business products and tools aimed at giving retailers powerful, integrated technology to better serve their customers and empower their team members, while delivering a seamless and personalized shopping experience to customers both online and in-store. Continue reading to learn about each Connected Stores product and how the FoodStorm order management system fits in.
Instacart’s Connected Stores products are modular and integrated to ensure each retailer can take advantage of the right products for their operations, while being able to add on others when expanding, able to compound on their investment with products that connect and work through the same platform. Below are the details on the nine products that make up Connected Stores:
Caper Carts are Instacart’s AI-powered smart shopping carts. These smart carts help eliminate checkout lines with seamless checkout right on the cart, so customers can bag as they shop, pay and go. Caper’s cart screen helps customers navigate the store, providing personalized product recommendations based on what’s in the cart, as well offering anti-theft capabilities with a built-in scale and basket auditing features. Retailers can easily plug and play with Caper Carts, as they can integrate into existing operations and customer patterns, helping drive incremental customer spend, building brand loyalty and increasing labor efficiency.
Scan & Pay is Instacart’s self-checkout solution used directly on customers’ personal smart phones. Scan & Pay allows customers to seamlessly shop, scan and pay with their own device, helping fight shrink with AI and machine learning-based fraud detection solutions. Scan & Pay also links items customers buy in-store to their online Instacart account, giving retailers unique insights on their omnichannel customer behaviors..
In-Store mode turns the Instacart App into a value companion for customers while they shop in person, making shopping more affordable, efficient and inspiring. Retailers can utilize In-Store mode to convert customers into omnichannel customers, allowing for loyalty program engagement, personalized digital coupons, smart shopping lists, even allowing customers to check stock levels of their wanted items.
Carrot Tags is Instacart’s software that is connected to retailers’ electronic shelf labels, allowing them to connect their hardware to the Instacart Platform. Carrot Tags offer pick-to-light capabilities, helping customers, store associates and Instacart Shoppers to more easily find the item they’re looking for when pinged from their device. Additionally, Carrot Tags allows retailers to display product information like dietaries or special offers, display a QR code for additional information like recipes, while creating true labor efficiencies due to the nominal time it takes to update the tags via bluetooth.
Out of Stock Insights helps improve in-store sales and operations with out-of-stock data that extends from Instacart-powered e-commerce storefronts and Instacart Shoppers. This real-time API allows retailers to be alerted when items are not found by associates or Instacart Shoppers, helping improve the customer experience and loss of revenue.
Eversight is Instacart’s AI-powered dynamic pricing software, helping retailers harness the power of hyper-experimentation while leveraging dynamic rules to help automate growth with promotion and pricing tests. Eversight is a Software-as-a-Service platform with an easy retailer interface that helps drive business performance at scale across all channels, helping retailers achieve their omnichannel goals.
Storefront is Instacart’s next-generation, white-label e-commerce solution, bringing the best of Instacart’s innovations to retailers’ e-commerce experience. Storefront helps retailers capitalize on the omnichannel trend in grocery while providing intuitive tools to grow and expand in ways not possible before. Offering a best-in-class retailer experience, Storefront helps drive online profitability, accelerate digital growth, promote what matters and amplify retailers’ brands.
Fulfillment as a Service is Instacart’s full-stack, end-to-end fulfillment technology, powering pickup and delivery in as fast as 1 hour, no matter what platform a retailer is on. Instacart offers one of the largest shopper networks backed by their flexible fulfillment software, allowing for easy integration in a retailer’s existing website, app and operations.
Finally, but certainly not least, FoodStorm is Instacart’s order management system, helping retailers streamline their prepared foods operations, digitize their processes and increase sales. FoodStorm delivers power omnichannel ordering capabilities for customers, helping reduce wait times and open new sales channels, while giving retailers tools to fulfill more orders, unlock broader assortment such as deli, made-to-order meals, even custom cakes, improving operational efficiency and back-of-house visibility.
The purpose behind Instacart’s Connected Stores is to connect the online and in-store experience. FoodStorm provides retailers a unique opportunity to offer their customers a differentiated service line with catering, prepared foods and other order ahead items, via online channels, while giving in-store teams the tools needed to effectively produce and fulfill such orders. FoodStorm connects with the Instacart App, Storefront, Caper Carts and Fulfillment, creating extremely valuable synergies for both retailers and customers, helping contribute to a truly omnichannel strategy.
Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities. If you’re interested in learning more about Connected Stores or specific products, submit a demo form here. And to learn more about what FoodStorm can do for your order ahead business, get in touch today.
