Even as Good Food Holdings moves ahead with some capabilities that are part of Instacart’s nascent Connected Stores suite of in-store solutions for retailers, the West Coast grocery chain is proceeding more cautiously as it considers implementing other aspects of the technology package, according to the retailer’s CEO, Neil Stern.

Good Food Holdings signed on with Instacart to be its inaugural retail partner for the Connected Stores initiative, which Instacart announced last September, and has already brought three of the suite’s components to a store under its Bristol Farms Newfound Market banner in Irvine, California, that opened last March.

Those services include Instacart's Caper smart carts, Food Storm prepared food-ordering software, and electronic shelf labels known as Carrot Tags that offer features like lights to guide shoppers to products along with displaying pricing information. Good Food Holdings has added the digital tags, known as ESLs, to some aisles in the Bristol Farms store and is taking steps to roll them out across the store.

While Good Food Holdings was able to add smart carts, electronic shelf labels and the Food Storm system relatively easily to an existing supermarket, it determined that other parts of the Connected Stores suite, which also ecompasses technology to sync shopping lists with smart carts and alert employees about out-of-stock items, are better suited to a newly built or remodeled store, according to Stern.

Good Food Holdings expects to integrate Connected Stores features it has not yet rolled out to a New Seasons Market location it expects to open in Portland, Oregon in 2024, and is still working to determine how it will meld those capabilities into the new store, Stern said.

Stern added that he and his team are purposely taking a slow approach as they introduce new technology to stores. “When we talk about technology we want to go from proof of concept to a pilot, learn what's happening in the pilot, and then look to deployment, and we've got to … put it in the IT roadmap with all the other things that we're trying to do with the amount of capital we have or don't have,” he said. “We’re constantly playing the long game.”

Working with multiple tech vendors at once

Stern noted that Good Food Holdings is working directly with technology suppliers other than Instacart as it looks to add new capabilities to its fleet of stores. For example, while the company is partnering with Instacart to fully outfit the Bristol Farms store in Irvine with electronic shelf labels made by SES-imagotag, the retailer has already finished bringing ESLs from that company to all of its Metropolitan Market locations in Seattle, Stern said.

In addition to Metropolitan Market, New Seasons Market and Bristol Farms, Good Food Holdings runs stores under the Lazy Acres Natural Market and New Leaf Community Markets banners.

Good Food Holdings is also in talks with multiple smart cart suppliers and intends to take advantage of the fact that it operates in several regions to test equipment from each of them. “The advantage for me, because I’ve got stores in three major markets, is I can do different things in each market,” Stern said.

While Good Food Holdings is eager to take advantage of capabilities Instacart is offering through the Connected Stores project, the retailer does not currently have plans to adopt the scan-and-go technology that is part of the suite, according to Stern. But in a reflection of the company’s willingness to move rapidly when it sees the need, the retailer plans to install self-checkout terminals at all of its stores by the end of 2023 even though it didn’t have the units in any of its locations until last year, according to Stern.

Earlier in February, Instacart announced that Foodcellar Market, a two-store grocer the operates in the New York City neighborhood of Long Island City, was the first retailer to start using the capability, known as Scan & Pay. Other retailers, including Schnuck Markets, Wakefern Food and Joseph’s Classic Market, are also taking part in the Connected Stores rollout, according to Instacart.

Stern said his top priority in adding new technology to Good Food Holdings stores is to ensure that those efforts don’t impede shoppers.

“If we don’t make this easy for the customers, they’re not going to go back and use the technology again,” he said. “I think we're erring on the side of maybe moving a little slower than, frankly, some of our technology providers might like because we’ve got to get this right.”