Veeve, a Seattle-based startup launched by two ex-Amazon managers, is partnering with Albertsons to bring its smart shopping cart technology to the grocery chain.
Veeve Smart Carts will be available at a few dozen stores across the country later this year, allowing shoppers to skip checkout lines thanks to the tech-enhanced devices.
Veeve was founded in 2018 and unveiled a year later by Shariq Siddiqui and Umer Sadiq, engineers who spent nearly 20 years combined at Amazon.
The carts feature a touch screen that provides a running total for in-cart items and a built-in scale for easy produce purchase, according to Veeve. They will also integrate with the Albertsons for U loyalty program. Shoppers can complete payment on their cart and walk out, tapping into the contactless, cashierless trend that Siddiqui and Sadiq’s former employer is pushing itself.
“This deployment is an important and inevitable next step in connecting the consumer’s e-commerce activity with a totally new, digitally driven in-store shopping experience,” Siddiqui, Veeve’s CEO, said in a news release Thursday.
CNBC reported Albertsons began testing Veeve carts at two of its stores in Idaho and California last November, and will now expand the partnership. Albertsons had 2,278 food and drug stores in the U.S. as of last December.
Amazon released its own smart shopping cart — the Dash Cart — in July 2020 that features cameras, sensors and a scale to automatically detect and log items on a digital display behind the handle. The tech giant, which also created “Just Walk Out” technology for its Go convenience stores and select full-size grocery stores, has introduced the carts at some of its Fresh grocery stores over the last two years.
After the launch of Amazon’s Dash Cart, Siddiqui gave GeekWire his reaction to the arrival of his former employer.
“We’re already out there. We’re already collecting a lot of customer data, a lot of computer vision training data. And so hopefully that gives us an edge,” Siddiqui said in 2020. “But obviously, we’re dealing with Amazon, so you can never underestimate them.”