A Basket Full of Savings: How Caper Carts Help Customers Save on Groceries & Stay On Budget

Across the country, from California to New York, customers are telling us that Instacart’s AI-powered Caper Carts are helping them save money. It’s a welcome respite at a time of record inflation, especially as groceries represent one of the largest monthly household expenses.

By surfacing relevant coupons, syncing to loyalty programs, and providing a running total while shopping, Caper Carts help everyone from young adults to senior citizens to families with children stay on budget and make their grocery dollars go further. Let’s take a closer look at how exactly it works. 

RUNNING TOTALS

At Instacart, we’ve seen firsthand the ways online grocery shopping can help families stay on budget and save money. A study by No Kid Hungry, the University of Kentucky, and Instacart found that online grocery shopping helps families living with low incomes plan ahead, manage their budget, and reduce unnecessary purchases. To further that, a Cambridge University study found this online benefit gave customers more control over their budget because of the visibility of seeing the running total.

And now because of Caper Carts, this once only-online benefit is brought inside the store too.

To get started, customers can grab a Caper Cart at the store’s entrance and start shopping. As customers add items to their Caper Cart, they are able to watch their running total – similarly to an online cart. Further, Caper Carts have a built-in scale that enable users to weigh produce right in their cart, providing instant price calculations. These tools help families manage their budget in real-time as they walk the aisle, without any surprises at checkout. If customers see they’ve exceeded their budget, they can simply remove an item from the cart, which will in turn remove the item from their running total.  

A recent Fox Business report, for example, noted that one of the most popular features is this running total so “customers can budget while they are shopping.” 

DIGITAL COUPONS & LOYALTY CARDS

In addition to the ability to track totals in real-time, Caper Carts enhance savings by not only syncing shopping lists but also linking directly to retailer loyalty programs to surface coupons that provide extra savings. Customers shopping with Caper Carts tell us they love the coupons. 

Customer Rachel Burns told the New York Post, for instance, that she “always scroll[s] through all of the coupons that [she] wouldn’t have known about if they weren’t right there on the cart… It’s definitely been a money saver.”

Coupons can be accessed by customers syncing their loyalty programs directly on the cart. This allows customers to browse deals and see what kind of coupons there might be for any frequently shopped items. When they find one, they can clip the coupon and apply the discounts to the checkout process right from their cart.

In fact, where customers can use these carts to shop we found that customers are not only shopping with ease, but they are also actively engaging with the coupon-browsing feature. We saw 40 percent of customers who shopped using Caper Carts clipped at least one coupon– increasing their savings by an average of $2.50 every time they shop. Those dollars add up: That could mean an estimated average savings of more than $200 per year, based on the average weekly grocery store trips. 

Taking it a step further, one major retailer now offers exclusive coupons just for Caper Cart users. There an increased number of customers are taking advantage of those deals – ultimately boosting their savings at checkout. This is all an early sign of how a customer’s purchasing decisions are driven from Caper Cart’s digital screen.

MORE SAVINGS ON THE HORIZON

We know how important savings are to customers. It’s why we’re working to make finding deals even easier on Caper Carts and will be testing new features in the coming months. We’re also working on additional features to further bridge gaps in accessibility and help even more families tap into Caper Cart’s in-store budget-management capabilities.

Caper Carts are more than just a shopping cart. They’re a tool that helps local retailers support their customers and helps families save on nutritious food and other grocery essentials. As this technology continues to evolve, it promises to further improve accessibility, affordability, and convenience — ultimately creating a more inclusive and dynamic shopping experience. 

We’re proud to offer this cutting-edge technology in stores across North America and Europe, and we know that embracing these innovations can lead us toward a future where technology uplifts every member of the community.

Instacart

Author

Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.