Instacart and Weis Markets, a mid-Atlantic food retailer, are launching Caper Carts at select Weis locations in Pennsylvania with additional rollouts planned throughout the year. Powered by Instacart’s AI-driven Connected Stores technology, Caper Carts transform the in-store experience with a smart, digital-first cart that puts convenience, savings and personalization directly in the hands of customers.
“Weis Markets and its associates have always been committed to delivering a best-in-class shopping experience, and Caper Carts are a meaningful step forward in that journey,” says Greg Zeh, senior vice president and chief information officer for Weis Markets. “From real-time spend tracking to on-cart coupons that make saving effortless, this technology offers our customers a convenient and frictionless shopping experience.”
“Weis Markets has spent more than 100 years delivering value, quality and service to its communities, and we’re thrilled to help them bring that commitment into the next era of grocery with Caper Carts,” says David McIntosh, chief connected stores officer for Instacart. “As a leader in physical AI, we’re giving retailers like Weis Markets a competitive advantage by bringing together in-store and online data through technology like Caper Carts to help them understand and respond to their customers with a level of intelligence that simply wasn’t possible before.”
With Caper Carts, Weis customers can track their spend in real time as they shop and will have access to Caper-exclusive coupons, including on-cart, location-based digital deals that customers can clip during their shopping trip. Customers will be able to sign up for a Weis Rewards account directly on the cart, and Weis Rewards members can also redeem loyalty benefits directly from the cart. Once loyalty accounts are linked, customers gain access to enhanced features, including Buy It Again, which surfaces previously purchased items to help build baskets more efficiently.
Weis will also launch on-cart advertising with Caper Carts, opening up opportunities for brands to reach customers while shopping. Features like the “Got everything you need?” prompt are already showing how real-time, location-aware prompts can influence customer purchasing behavior by driving a nearly 1 percentage point lift in basket size on average, a strong early signal of what in-store digital engagement can deliver.
Caper Carts are equipped with basket-facing camera sensors, weights and measures-certified scales, location-tracking systems, outward-facing cameras and an intuitive touchscreen that makes every trip more informed and rewarding. The technology is part of Instacart’s broader approach to physical AI for grocery, combining edge computing on Caper Carts with cloud AI trained on more than 1.6 billion online grocery orders and a decade of grocery expertise.
By bringing together in-store and online retailer data, Instacart says it builds a real-time understanding of customers, shelves and store activity. Retailers benefit with increased sales, reduced out-of-stocks and retail media revenue, and customers benefit with more personalized shopping experiences and savings opportunities.
Weis Markets joined the Instacart Marketplace in 2023, and with the launch of Caper Carts, Instacart’s technology is now extending into Weis’ physical stores.
Caper Carts now span more than 100 cities across 15 states and are available across more than a dozen retail banners, including Kroger, Schnucks and Wakefern banners (ShopRite, Fairway Market), Coles in Australia, with Morrisons in the United Kingdom coming later this year. Instacart has tripled the number of Caper Carts deployed year over year.
