Personalization Meets Profitability: How AI Is Helping Grocers Drive Bigger Baskets

Consumers today expect every online experience to feel personal — including grocery. They want to see the products that matter to them, discover what’s new, and feel confident that each interaction reflects their preferences.

For grocers, delivering that kind of tailored experience isn’t simple. Assortments change daily, promotions rotate weekly, and every customer’s needs are unique. That’s why we’re bringing the intelligence and scale of the Instacart Marketplace to Storefront Pro — helping retailers use proven insights to create personalized, high-performing digital experiences on their own sites and apps.

AI should enhance the grocer’s voice, not replace it. Our goal is to make personalization seamless, scalable, and true to each retailer’s brand.

Making personalization practical

Within Storefront Pro, our enterprise commerce platform built specifically for grocery, powerful recommendation capabilities make personalization practical. With the help of a massive grocery-specific data set and industry-leading automation, retailers can exchange complex and manual online merchandising for simple, effective tools that drive measurable results. Building on our existing complementary and recommendation offering, we recently added additional features to drive greater AI powered personalization. Pairings — smarter discovery

Pairings — smarter discovery

Pairings uses machine learning to surface complementary products across browse, search, and checkout. By intuiting customer preferences based on search and transaction history, anticipating what they need, and making proactive recommendations retailers can offer curated product carousels that boost category performance without manual merchandising.

“Pairings has made it easier for our customers to discover new products naturally” – — Gelson’s Customer Experience Team

“These suggestions feel relevant, not random. We’ve seen strong engagement in key categories without adding merchandising overhead.” — Save Mart Team

In addition to improving product discovery, results from these pairings experiences when tested on Instacart Marketplace included lift in GMV and add to baskets.

Checkout aisle recommendations — anticipate customer needs

Another recent enhancement now available in Storefront Pro, is Check Out Aisle recommendations. After a customer clicks to check out, our solution presents automatically generated recommendations to them, featuring common home and daily essentials and best sellers. Retailers can also create custom collections to feature at this critical point during check out to increase basket size.

Personalization that pays off

Each of these features reflects a shared goal: making the grocery experience simpler for consumers and more valuable for retailers. They automate repetitive work, improve merchandising impact, and help retailers deliver better experiences for their customers.

At Instacart, we’re committed to delivering innovation that’s tested, scalable, and designed for the grocery industry. Storefront Pro turns those learnings into real-world impact — helping every retailer connect with customers in ways that drive growth and loyalty.

Learn more about Storefront Pro