Amazon’s New Smart Cart at Whole Foods Is Now Smarter for More Efficient Grocery Shopping
Written by
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
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Gary Dudak
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Amazon announced it is making its new Dash Cart — a smart shopping cart — available at a Westford, Massachusetts Whole Foods Market store, which will be followed by a few additional Whole Foods Market stores and many Amazon Fresh stores in the U.S.
The company launched the Amazon Dash Cart in September 2020, aiming to make grocery trips quicker by letting customers skip the checkout line. The updated version includes new features such as real-time receipts and the ability to weigh produce directly in the cart’s basket, said Dilip Kumar, Vice President, Physical Retail and Technology, in a blog post on Amazon’s website.
To use it, customers log in through a QR code in the Amazon or Whole Foods Market app, and then scan items using one of the cameras near the handlebar of the Dash Cart. The Dash Cart’s screen shows a real-time receipt of all items in the cart, and when shoppers are ready to check out, they simply exit the store through the Amazon Dash Cart lane and their payment is processed using the credit card associated with their Amazon account. Shoppers will receive an emailed receipt shortly after leaving the store.
“As many of our customers return to their in-store grocery shopping routines, it’s exciting to introduce new and unique ways for them to shop our stores,” said Whole Foods CTO Leandro Balbinot. “We’re thrilled that the newest version of Dash Cart will debut in our Westford store and can’t wait to hear the feedback from our customers there.”
The new, bigger carts are also “weather resistant,” because according to Kumar, “… we knew shoppers would want to take the carts all the way to their cars, which meant the carts would have to be able to withstand summer heat and winter cold.”
“To test durability, we baked the technology in an oven and froze test carts in a giant freezer to ensure they would survive harsh weather conditions. We also dropped heavy weights into test carts’ baskets more than 100,000 times to ensure they would remain usable after impact,” he added.
In order to use Dash Carts at Whole Foods Market stores, customers need an Amazon or Whole Foods Market account and mobile app to log in to use the Dash Carts.
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