Instacart has unveiled Clementine, its AI-powered shopping assistant. The company has also announced the onboarding of new distributors to Cart Assistant, its AI-driven enterprise platform. This tool offers distributors a customizable shopping experience branded to their own label, based on their catalog and customer data, and enhanced with the same technology and intelligence behind Clementine.
Clementine is designed to solve the most challenging parts of shopping: deciding what to cook for dinner, shopping around real family habits, and sticking to a budget without having to devote extensive time and mental effort. Messages like “I need affordable school lunches for the kids all week,” “easy, high-protein dinners for two,” or “order what we usually do” are transformed into a personalized cart ready to buy in seconds. The experience is grounded in real-time product availability at the store the customer has chosen. In this way, it lets consumers spend less time figuring out what to cook and more time enjoying the meal.
“Every night, millions of families ask themselves the same question: ‘What are we having for dinner tonight?’ Not knowing the answer, or even what to buy, is one of the most universal human experiences, and it’s a problem Instacart is ready to solve,” said Chris Rogers, CEO of Instacart. “We’ve spent almost 15 years learning how families shop and eat, and Clementine puts all that knowledge at the service of customers. It learns from the preferences they share and from how they have shopped on Instacart previously. It can help them stay within budget and show them what products are actually available at the store they chose. It also handles much of the weekly planning so the mental load is really lighter.”
“More than 80% of Americans say deciding what to cook for dinner is stressful, and nearly a third say the hardest part isn’t cooking, but deciding what to cook. More than six in ten would be interested in having an AI assistant to help with this task.”
The differentiator of the solution is the foundation on which it’s built: more than 1.6 billion orders on record, a catalog of over 2 billion items, and more than 10 million daily signals about inventory across nearly 100,000 stores belonging to more than 2,200 banners across North America. This foundation lets the company know inventory with high precision and helps Clementine know in real time which products are on the shelves at each store. It also provides deep insight into the actual buying and eating habits of families, the products they buy week after week, and the deals available at each store at any given moment.
What Clementine Can Do
- Solve the dinner dilemma. Finding the right recipe shouldn’t be as labor-intensive as cooking it. The assistant takes care of it, generating personalized recipes instantly or offering options and alternatives.
- Adapts to every household. Whether you’re seeking gluten-free products, vegetarian options, nut-free items, or organic choices, Clementine makes recommendations with your household’s real habits in mind. It also lets customers set their preferences once so they apply across the entire experience.
- Helps save money effortlessly. Clementine shows relevant deals and promotions based on user preferences and helps identify cheaper alternatives, making it easy to shop within any budget.
- Automatically repeats orders. The “buy the usual” or “restock pantry staples” options use past orders to craft a ready-to-go shopping list in seconds.
- Shop for any plan or occasion. For example, telling the assistant “everything needed to host a watch-party for a football game with 20 friends” becomes a personalized list tailored to brand preferences and dietary needs.
- Upload your shopping list. From a photo of a handwritten list or a screenshot of a digital list, Clementine creates a list that can be added to the cart automatically.
The early results using the tool show clear progress; customers start with simple tasks like restocking products and then move on to more advanced uses such as discovering new recipes. On average, orders placed with Clementine include more items than the typical Instacart basket and exceed $115 in value, a leading figure in the sector.
“Shopping is one of the most routine activities, and at the same time, one of the most personal,” said John Adams, Vice President and Head of Product at Instacart. “What we’ve built with Clementine is a system that understands both dimensions: not just what you need, but also how you eat, what you like, and what products are on the shelves at your store right now. Whatever you crave or plan, Clementine helps you get it. The more you use it, the more natural it becomes to weave it into your shopping routine, until it’s a tool you reach for week after week.”
