Albertsons Cos. has reached a milestone in its digital transformation journey with the launch of the Albertsons AI shopping assistant, a web browser experience designed to make grocery shopping faster and more personalized.
The Boise, Idaho-based retailer aims to reduce shopping time from an average of 46 minutes to as little as four minutes.
As the industry leans into agentic commerce, the Albertsons AI shopping assistant moves beyond search to execute complex end-to-end grocery tasks helping customers complete shopping from recipe to cart in minutes. Building on the success of the company’s Ask AI tool introduced earlier this year, the agentic shopping assistant is a customer-friendly conversational experience powered by many collaborative agents, available on all Albertsons Cos. banner websites.
“Our goal at Albertsons Companies is to make our customers’ lives easier, and by implementing AI-powered features across the customer journey from discovery to purchase, we are delivering an experience that’s faster, easier and more enjoyable,” said Jill Pavlovich, SVP of digital customer experience for Albertsons Companies.
“We are laser-focused on using AI as part of our strategy to meet customers when and how they choose to shop, ultimately driving customer growth and engagement through digital connection. The Albertsons AI shopping assistant is an exciting step in this journey, with much more innovation to come.”
AI-powered shopping capabilities
Powered by OpenAI models, the Albertsons AI shopping assistant helps customers plan meals, restock essentials, discover new products and shop smarter. The assistant can complete complex shopping tasks including:
- Reordering weekly and frequent purchases;
- Generating a weekly meal plan and shopping list with de-duplicated ingredients added to the cart;
- Finding personalized products for everything on a typed or uploaded written grocery list;
- Creating recipes using what a customer has in their fridge and pantry;
- Importing an online recipe or image and adding the ingredients to the cart; and
- Creating curated product ideas with offers based on themes or upcoming holidays.
“With the Albertsons AI shopping assistant, we can understand our customers’ needs on a deeper level, allowing us to serve them in the best way possible,” Pavlovich said.
“Our current meal-planning capabilities are exceptional, and now through dynamic two-way conversations with our shoppers, they can give us further context such as the customer is cooking a meal for six people but wants leftovers and one person is a vegetarian. We can provide tailored recommendations in the moment with all of these considerations and enhance future interactions with personalized product and recipe recommendations featuring our latest deals and coupons.”
Mobile expansion planned for 2026
Expanding into the Albertsons Companies banner mobile apps in early 2026, the Albertsons AI shopping assistant will launch additional agentic commerce capabilities including budget optimization, in-store aisle location to find products and voice integration.
The assistant is accessible through the Meals Hub section of the company’s banner websites. Customers can experience Albertsons AI at albertsons.com/assistant.
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