Algolia has introduced its Intelligent Grocery Solution, a new artificial intelligence (AI) application designed specifically for the grocery industry. The platform combines real-time search, personalized recommendations and inventory-aware discovery to simplify and personalize the digital grocery shopping experience.
For decades, the grocery store has been a place of familiar and functional habits. Now, an undeniable shift is underway: grocery shopping is increasingly moving online. In 2025, an estimated 138 million U.S. consumers are expected to shop for groceries online, a number projected to grow through 2030. Digital grocery sales are expanding 5.2 times faster than in-store sales.
Algolia said its Intelligent Grocery Solution is built to reduce common friction points such as substitutions, out-of-stock items and repetitive reordering while addressing the tight margins and rising costs grocers face.
“We’ve always believed that search and discovery should feel effortless, almost invisible,” said Bernadette Nixon, CEO of Algolia.
“With our Intelligent Grocery Solution, we are bringing that philosophy to one of the most vital industries in the world. This is not about adding more AI for the sake of it – it’s about designing technology that helps grocers thrive while making everyday shopping profoundly simpler, faster and more personal for millions of people.”
The solution provides features such as:
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Interactive guidance for shoppers, including converting handwritten notes into shopping lists or building dietary-specific carts.
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Real-time, intuitive search that interprets natural language whether typed, spoken or handwritten.
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Predictive, personalized recommendations to transform reorders into curated baskets.
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Real-time stock visibility to reduce substitutions.
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Retail media and private-label promotion tools to create new revenue streams.
“Co-op is focused on continually innovating to deliver ease, speed and convenience for our shoppers,” said Gareth Cottiss, Co-op’s quick commerce development manager. “Our work with Algolia has supported the delivery of a seamless and positive customer experience, consistently.”
Algolia said its solution has already driven measurable improvements. Auto Mercado, for example, reported a more than 50 percent lift in conversion and doubled the industry’s average for online sales.
The company emphasized that the Intelligent Grocery Solution is designed to support both customer experience and business outcomes. Benefits include higher basket sizes, reduced customer churn, improved profitability through reduced waste, new revenue streams and seasonal or contextual discovery to help grocers move inventory when demand peaks.
“This is not a generic framework – it is a pre-assembled, ready-to-implement solution, designed with the unique cadence of grocery shopping in mind,” Nixon said. “It understands that 80 percent of carts are reorders and that margins are fragile. But above all, it recognizes that convenience is the single greatest differentiator in online grocery shopping. When every second counts, our solution ensures that shopping feels effortless, personal, and precisely tuned to each shopper’s needs.”
About Algolia
San Francisco, California-based Algolia powers 1.75 trillion searches annually for more than 18,000 businesses and millions of developers. Its AI search and retrieval platform combines keyword search, vector-based NeuralSearch, rules and personalization, making it the largest hosted search engine available today.
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