Kroger says customers using its AI-powered shopping assistant are building larger grocery baskets as the retailer expands the use of AI across its digital shopping experience. The tool helps customers plan meals, find products, and build carts based on their budgets, dietary requirements, and preferences.

Yael Cosset, Kroger’s executive vice president and chief digital officer, discussed the larger basket sizes during Groceryshop 2026 in Las Vegas, according to Supermarket News. Cosset said he had expected customers who gave the assistant detailed instructions to buy fewer products because the tool would narrow its recommendations, but users instead added more items to their baskets.

Kroger has not disclosed the size of the basket increase or the number of customers using the assistant. The retailer rolled out the tool across its websites and apps in July.

Customers can use the AI Shopping Assistant to plan meals, find recipes, and build grocery carts based on budgets, dietary requirements, and other preferences. The tool can also process photographs of handwritten shopping lists or recipe cards and identify products to add to a cart.

Kroger said in January that the assistant was being designed to handle broader multi-step tasks, including exploring meal ideas, building carts for specific occasions, reordering past purchases, and comparing product details. At its July launch, Kroger confirmed features including meal planning, recipe discovery, tailored product suggestions, and converting written lists, recipe cards, and URLs into shopping carts.

Personalisation builds on Kroger’s loyalty data

Speaking at Groceryshop, Cosset said adoption has been relatively evenly distributed across Kroger’s customer segments. Kroger also plans to incorporate more of its existing personalisation capabilities into the assistant so recommendations can reflect individual shopping habits and preferences.

That personalisation is supported by Kroger’s loyalty programme. The retailer said in its latest annual filing that it serves around 63 million households annually and that more than 95% of customer transactions are linked to a Kroger loyalty card.

Kroger said it has invested in data science capabilities for more than 20 years and uses customer and operational data to support personalised experiences. The assistant can already take a customer’s budget, dietary requirements, and stated preferences into account when planning meals and building carts.

Kroger also uses AI for demand forecasting, replenishment, and other operational functions. Product availability is relevant to the shopping assistant because Kroger said recommendations are tied to products, prices, and inventory that customers can purchase through its digital channels.

The retailer combines internally developed models with third-party AI models and said in January that it would use Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience as part of its meal and shopping assistants. Kroger has also outlined privacy, security, responsible AI governance, and human oversight measures for its AI deployments.

Retailers link AI shopping to larger orders

Kroger is not the only US grocer reporting higher order values among customers using conversational shopping tools. Albertsons told The Wall Street Journal in August that it sees around a 10% lift in average order value when customers use standard conversational search and around a 26% lift when they use more comprehensive assistants for recipes, ingredients, and dietary preferences.

Albertsons’ shopping assistant covers many of the same tasks as Kroger’s tool. The retailer said customers can use it to create meal plans and shopping lists, reorder frequently purchased products, import recipes, process images of handwritten lists, and receive product recommendations.

The retailers are reporting different measurements. Kroger has disclosed larger baskets without providing a percentage increase, while Albertsons has reported changes in average order value among users of its AI shopping tools. These figures relate to customers using the tools rather than changes in overall company revenue.

Adobe Digital Insights has also recorded higher conversion and engagement among shoppers arriving at retail websites from AI services. Its analysis of more than one trillion visits to US retail websites found that AI-referred traffic increased 138% year over year in May 2026 and converted 54% better than non-AI traffic.

Adobe also found that AI-referred visitors spent 53% longer on retail sites, viewed 23% more pages, and generated 53% more revenue per visit than non-AI traffic. Adobe’s figures cover traffic referred by external AI services, rather than customers using assistants embedded within retailers such as Kroger and Albertsons.

Kroger introduced its assistant while its wider digital business was also growing, although the company has not linked that growth to the AI tool. Adjusted ecommerce sales increased 20% in its second quarter ended August 15, while profit from Kroger Precision Marketing rose 24%.

Kroger generated more than $16 billion in ecommerce sales during fiscal 2025. Earlier this year, the retailer said it had completed a review of its ecommerce operations and expected the changes to improve ecommerce operating profit by $400 million in 2026.

Kroger’s loyalty data also supports its retail media business. In its latest annual filing, the company said Kroger Precision Marketing uses first-party shopping data to support advertising across onsite search, display, social media, connected TV, and in-store placements, while linking media exposure with subsequent household transactions.

Retail media is also present within the AI Shopping Assistant. Kroger Precision Marketing told Modern Retail that product listing ads were available at launch, with sponsored products appearing alongside organic recommendations when relevant to a customer’s request. Existing product listing campaigns can also be eligible for placement in the assistant without advertisers creating a separate campaign.

Kroger is also examining a longer-term role for shopping agents. Cosset said the company sees AI progressing from assisting with tasks to augmenting customer decisions and, in some cases, handling functions more autonomously where appropriate.

The current assistant already covers parts of that process through meal planning, product recommendations, and cart creation.

(Photo by Jonny Gios)

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