Can AI smart carts make shopping easier? One Miami grocer is trying them out

Excuse me, where is the sugar?

Some shoppers need GPS to find their way around the neighborhood supermarket. Last week, soup was in Aisle 3. Now, it’s not And try finding the aspirin to help you deal with your shopping headache.

Miami-based Milam’s Market has rolled out AI-powered smart carts to help lost shoppers find the items on their list. It’s a pilot program run by an entrepreneurial Columbia Business School MBA grad and the grocery chain.

While these shopping carts can’t drive themselves around the store, they can help a shopper get to the right place. They can organize a shopper’s list and use GPS navigation to lead to the shortest route through the aisles. They also can display coupons and give nutritional information, and even remember your preferences when you log in with a phone number.

Could smart shopping carts be the next big trend in grocery shopping?

“The story stems from my side having my own issues in stores,” said Julian Janna, the 31-year-old founder of Coupr, a New York-based startup that chose Miami to test the carts. “My girlfriend might give me a list of things I need to pick up, and I have no idea where they are, so it stems from just everyday issues I’ve had personally — and a lot of people I’ve spoken with.”

Janna approached Milam’s last year with his idea to let customers try out the new smart cart technology he developed and give feedback.

The family-owned Milam’s Market, which has six stores from Pinecrest to Sunny Isles Beach, recently signed on to try out Janna’s new Coupr smart carts at the Pinecrest location at 11701 S. Dixie Hwy. and the Coconut Grove store, also tucked off U.S. 1 at 2969 SW 32nd Ave.

“Julian, the founder, was familiar with the Miami market, and was looking for a smaller retailer to partner with … and being a family business we’re able to be a little bit more accessible and flexible, so I think it helped make a good fit for him,” said Lee Milam, president and chief operating officer for Milam’s, a grocer that dates back to 1984 in the Miami area.

“We get a lot of technology and solutions that come across our door,” Milam said. “It’s a matter of what’s really going to be the best use of our time? How can we make the shopping experience ultimately better, drive more value to the customers, and continue to compete and evolve as the business changes?”

Right now, shoppers can find 10 Coupr-enabled carts at each of the two Milam’s locations, with a goal of 20. There is no cost to the customer to use Coupr. The carts with the attached tablet-sized screens and scanners are available alongside the store’s usual grocery carts.

What does smart cart do?

Aisle navigation: The Coupr smart cart system navigates an aisle with the tech you use to drive, like Google or Apple Maps or Waze. Shoppers can type or search for a product on the handlebar touchscreen, and the cart’s map guides them to the aisle location.

Marcela Ash regularly shops at the chain’s Grove location, but was in the Pinecrest neighborhood and popped into Milam’s there, trying the Coupr system for the first time. Janna and Diego Escalante, his assistant standing out front tasked with introducing the carts to curious customers, gave Ash a quick tutorial on how to use the screen and enter items from her shopping list.

You can tell the AI assistant what you want to find manually or verbally or scan in a handwritten shopping list. You can even import a photo of a shopping list and the system will recognize the lettering and add your chosen items to its memory. The cart will recognize you by phone number.

Ash’s fingers darts across the screen with her item choices.

“Everybody’s getting used to the idea of AI. I think it’s wonderful, I think it’s beneficial for every person,” Ash said as she followed the map icon on the screen.

There’s the bagged baby arugula. The produce section. It’s a hot summer. She finds a watermelon nearby and places it in the basket seat just ahead of the touchscreen. Next, she steers her cart all the way across the store to the frozen food cases.

“The bigger the supermarket, the harder it is” to find items, she said, eyeing the screen and pulling product from the cases. “I like a smaller supermarket, but at a bigger one it’s impossible, really.”

Another customer, Miriam Alonso, a first-time shopper at Milam’s, lets Janna and Escalante talk her into giving the AI cart a try.

Alonso was surprised the system could alert her to sales as she strolled the aisles.

“It’s like another world, you know? You’re like ‘OK, I’m in the store, but I’m like shopping online too,’ “ she said.

Scan and compare: The Coupr AI screen also offers a scan-and-compare feature. Shoppers can scan or tap an item’s barcode to pull up an instant breakdown of nutrition facts. The interface allows side-by-side comparison with similar items based on price, sugar, protein or calories.

Shopper Rod Barco has been using Coupr’s AI shopping assistant on his visits. He’s sold on the feature.

“Coupr is useful for comparing different products,” he said as he placed a container of Baris brand frozen-dipped raspberries into his cart. “Kinda cool. You can look at health metrics or price discounts. You can see how many grams of fiber or protein are in a product.”

Barco scans a bottle of wine he found via the AI cart.

“What I also like is you can find things on discount,” Barco said, clutching his find. “This is usually around $60 and it was for $44. Came up as a promotion. I haven’t spoken to the machine yet, but I’m very tech forward,” the 28-year-old Gulliver grad said.

So he tries that feature out.

“Take me to the protein-centric snacks,” Barco says, leaning toward the tablet. “Where can I find a protein snack?”

That’s the command that worked. Sometimes it takes a couple prompts to hit on exactly what you are looking for.

Coupr flashes product images on its screen in response. Barco opts for a Made Good package of Organic Chewy Granola Bars.

“I went with this one,” he said, product in hand. “A company from Canada. A good amount of fiber,” he said. “I think it’s great Milam’s is keeping up with technology.

Aisle-aware promotions: The cart detects its physical location in the store and flashes relevant digital coupons and promotions on-screen as the shopper walks past specific items.

Personalized memory: By logging in on the screen via a phone number, the assistant remembers customer preferences, suggesting usual purchases alongside relevant new items to try.

How do these smart shopping carts work?

You can start by downloading the Coupr app from the Apple store to create a user profile and add, and modify, grocery items to your shopping list, which will then sync to the smart cart screens once you enter the same phone number. Look for the orange grocery cart Coupr logo when scrolling the App Store. But you don’t have to have the app to use the service.

Here’s how it works:

You take an equipped cart that will have an attached screen from a row of about 10 at one of the two participating Milam’s Markets.
If you’ve input your shopping list, you can tap the Take Me There! black tab next to images of the items. Follow the map. You can also hit a mic icon and speak to the cart, as Barco did to find the granola bars he wanted.
The aisle-aware feature can also display similar items as you scroll by or stop and read the ingredients list. In light green-, purple- and blue-colored tabs next to the product image you can immediately spot calories, sugar content in grams and protein. Much easier than reading the fine print somewhere on the packaging the old-fashioned way. Prices are also clearly displayed.
When you finish shopping and pull up to the cashier, ask them to scan your cart’s screen. This helps Coupr memorize what you bought so it can offer suggestions or help you find what you are looking for the next time you sign in.

Currently, the Coupr AI assistant responds in English if you verbally ask, or write out, your request or grocery list item in Spanish. That’s one area developers are working on, Janna said, like the multilingual hologram assistants are at Miami International Airport.

Ash, one of the customers, tried the AI tablet to find coupons and discounts and did so in Spanish. It understood her. She smiled.

“I find it fantastic,” she said. “It’s an incredible add-on. It’s a plus for anybody. It’s like Miami! Anything that can make your life better, more efficient, simpler, is wonderful.”

AI grocery shopping growing

AI-assisted grocery shopping has started to trickle out nationwide.

Amazon-owned Whole Foods began experimenting with its Dash Cart system in some California stores before slowly expanding to other states in 2024, ABC 7 reported when a San Mateo store was the first in California to try the technology.

Locally, the Midtown Miami Whole Foods at 2910 Biscayne Blvd., and the new Doral Whole Foods at 10700 SW 41st St. that opened this month, offer the smart Dash Carts

These smart carts primarily act as “rolling cashiers.” The sensor-equipped shopping carts let customers log in through their Amazon or Whole Foods apps using a QR code and begin scanning items. The carts include a scale for weighing produce. A built-in real-time receipt keeps track of the items in your cart. When you’re done shopping you can use the store’s designated checkout line and sail right out of the store without having to stop and pay. Payment is via the credit card you have associated with your Amazon or Whole Foods account.

Amazon aims to have the Dash Carts walk-out technology service in 25 stores by the end of 2026, according to digital trade publication Grocery Dive.

Publix did not respond to a Miami Herald inquiry on whether the Lakeland-based chain plans to use similar AI-equipped shopping carts.

How Coupr technology differs

Unlike the Amazon checkout-focused “smart carts” that primarily act as rolling cashiers, the Coupr carts are built to act as personalized, in-store digital shopping assistants, Janna said.

The Coupr founder was born in Colombia and worked as a financier for J.P. Morgan in New York for almost six years before earning his MBA at Columbia Business School in 2024. He’s been in New York for the last eight years but says he is in Miami constantly and found South Florida ideal to introduce his concept.

In the future he envisions, and welcomes, Coupr’s adoption in competing chains like Publix, Winn-Dixie and other popular grocers as the service improves and builds on existing features and adds others.

“My passion has always been to do entrepreneurship. My vision for Coupr is to have this in every single store where people are buying,” Janna said. “Of course, there will be learning curves and getting used to using different carts. I mean, we’ve been using regular carts our whole life, right? But I think we’re in this point in history and time when technology is changing so quickly that I want to make sure the technology that’s being introduced in supermarkets is a shopper-first approach.”

He started with Milam’s last fall at the newest store, the Coral Gables East location on 37th Avenue. That’s a ground-level store in a mixed-used residential business that houses many University of Miami students.

There was low cart usage at the Gables East store. The college-age shoppers didn’t seize on the AI-loaded carts, Janna said. Perhaps living dorm-style, students buy groceries in smaller quantities. Coupr’s current technology requires the use of a shopping cart to attach its touch screens, not a carrying basket or a smartphone integrated with an Apple Watch, for instance.

“I’m very familiar with the Milam supermarkets. I know what they’re all about. The shopper. The sense of family and local. You can see that in their selection of products,” Janna said about why he approached that chain first.

The Grove and Pinecrest stores were selected next and the pilot program service at these two stores has been extended through the end of the summer, Lee Milam said. “We’ll see where it goes from there.”

Milam weighed whether to try the Coupr system for his stores. Both insist the AI assistance isn’t meant to replace store employees that you’d traditionally approach and ask, “Where’s the bee pollen?”

“A lot of technology, I think, can possibly get in the way of customers’ experience, or shift more of the burden to the customer,” Milam said. “I look at self-checkouts. Something we’ve looked at a lot in the past and do we go that route or do we stay how we are? And we’ve elected to stick with the full service model. We just think it fits better with our brand.”

The Coupr technology, however, intrigued the grocery chain’s president.

“On the surface it kind of seems a little bit like, ‘Hey, we’re taking the responsibility for helping the customer away from our associates and moving it towards the customer themselves,’” he said. “But as we talked to Julian, he helped us understand the benefit that this could offer to shoppers just looking for that instant answer.”