Carrefour’s Record-Breaking Smart Cart Rollout | Fast Five Shorts

Carrefour Israel and A to Z Custom Made Solutions have announced a five year $50 million agreement to deploy 4,000 smart shopping carts across Carrefour Israel stores.

One, which is one of, if not the largest smart cart deployments in retail history according to Chain Storage.

The rollout is set to begin in Q3, 2026.

I see Laura already laughing.

Across six Carrefour Israel flagship stores and will include end to end delivery of smart cart hardware, charging infrastructure, advanced software systems, full implementation training and long term support.

Tell them what they've won, Bob.

A to Z has been granted exclusive retail media and data monetization rights on the smart card platform for the duration of the deployment, giving the deal a recurring revenue model built on top of the hardware.

Carrefour Israel expects approximately $35 million in profits tied to the agreement, with additional operating with additional operational efficiencies and sales gains contributing beyond that figure.

Laura, I have two questions to close out the headlines today.

One, are you buying?

Number one, are you buying the size of this deal?

I think I may know which way you're leading on that.

And two, what are your opinions on smart carts in general?

Well, I will say I did listen to a bit of you and Carter talking about smart cards.

So I, I know that like, you know, maybe Omnitalk is like off smart carts right now.

So I know that.

Spoiler alert.

So that's part of why, why I'm, I'm laughing.

I know not all of smart cards but I mean the first thing that this calls to mind for me is several years ago when Walmart made a deal for in store robots in like a thousand stores which you know, for Walmart is huge.

Only to call it back a few years later, that is not to hate on robots.

Some companies are still seeing success with that, but it's just interesting.

Oh yes, we love robots at Arby Talk.

We definitely love robots.

We love robots.

But for this deal it seems like there's so much bundled in it in terms of the amount of money and everything like that, it's hard to know.

Does all of this materialize?

Obviously they're focused on making the store more trackable because they're really focused on the retail media and monetization points.

So yeah, the answer, the short answer to this, are you buying the size of this deal?

Is like I guess I don't, I'm not really clear what's in the, in the amount, you know, and whether it's actually going to happen because of my feeling about smart cards, which is they, they clearly haven't proven an ROI at scale yet.

And that's.

I, I don't think that we should expect them to.

And maybe this is in a backwards way actually saying I don't think the size of the deal is good because my feeling with cashierless checkout from the beginning has been that it's going to be one option for, that works for some shoppers and not for others.

You know, some consumers, including me, still kind of hate self checkout.

The, the, the, the first iteration of this.

Others love it.

They think it's more efficient.

I know my husband's somebody who like always wishes there was more scan and go type options and, and I always try and tell him this is what, no, there's too much shrink, can't do it.

But you know, like there's people who want different options.

And so I.

Having it be your sole option feels like a lot of, you know, you know, to put in that basket.

And then I think with so many store tech solutions, they sound great and I would include robots in this, but operationally it's so hard because every store is different.

Shelves aren't even.

You know, it's just all this stuff that doesn't, that is much more difficult than it seems in the beginning.

You know, Amazon has only put the dash cart, which I think is still called the dash cart.

The dash.

Not even in other retailers.

They're only having them in whole food stores and I feel like that's telling because they're in control of the whole food store.

They could like change it to look like what they want.

So when you say 4,000 across, I, I think there's like 150 car, four stores in Israel.

That's like, that is a lot for it to be just an option.

So, yeah, I'm skeptical.

I'm curious what, what your smart cart POV is.

I'm skeptical of the deal because the one thing that stuck out to me is like you're doing a six store pilot when you signed a $50 million deal.

Something.

Yeah, something.

Somebody's jumping the gun on something or something is off in the way this story was written.

So that's, that's why I was skeptical of it because you don't pilot something and then invest 50 and say you're already investing $50 million.

So that's weird.

But I think what, I think what you're hitting on here, and I've been thinking a lot about this.

I mean, God, we talk about smart cards.

I feel like every month, I think, I think the term smart card is just basically a disservice at the end of the day.

Because you know what I like about the idea of a smart shopping cart is really the two things that have proven to be valuable to the consumer and to the retailer.

One, you can see your budget in real time as you shop, which I think is a valuable feature.

And two, and this is actually beneficial for the consumer too.

You can get served up ads while you shop.

Right?

That's beneficial for the brands and the retailers.

That's really what we're talking about here.

That's.

That's where the value comes in.

The idea of actually being able to exit the store checkout free.

Like, I don't think anyone really cares about that from an incremental value standpoint.

So I feel like, I feel like this is doing custom, which their solution actually looks like.

You don't need a whole cart redesign.

From what I, when I was perusing the site, it's actually like it actually just bolts on to an existing cart and you can use it to do those things I talked about to provide those two elements of value to it.

So, like, I think the industry actually needs to go away from calling these things smart cards and let's just call them what they are, Laura.

Let's just call it the retail media and couponing bolt on, because that's really what everybody wants to do.

And let's just find the solution that does that in the best way possible.

I mean, it sounds silly, but it's so obvious to me when we talk about it like that.

I'm just, I'm over smart cards, but I mean, I.

Talk me off the ledge here, Laura.

Yeah, no laughing in the background as I'm saying that.

But like, that's really what we're talking about.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the bolt on has always seemed like the way it's going to go.

I mean, these whole carts with computer vision are like just insane investments for something that did not cost that much for the retailer to buy in its old form.

So, like, yeah, that just doesn't.

That is the correct direction.

The thing with, with retail media that I keep bumping up against is that that's really great for the brands and the retailer.

I'm just so curious to your point.

At least if it has the budgeting aspect, then that's going to make a consumer use it.

But like, what is the value for the consumer?

Okay, the budgeting is good.

Maybe it's a little faster.

You perceive it's faster, which is actually all that really matters.

And so that's good, because the retail media in store, I'm not, like, hating on it at all.

But for that thing from, like, 10 years ago, like, how much ads do you want to be pounded with?

Right, right, exactly.

If that's half of the proposition, I mean, that's the retailer and the brand proposition.

That's not the consumer proposition.

So you have to have consumers adopt this.

Which again, just brings me back to like, yeah, make it an option if you want, and if you want to get some ads and some coupons, like, have at it.

But making it like, the size of this implies that they want all their checkouts to be that.

And it makes me a little more curious.

I don't know the Israel market that well.

Like, is there a real labor challenge here that we're trying to.

That's, like, more extreme than what we see in the States or in Europe that, like, that we're really having to deal with?

Because then that would answer a little the question of, like, why is this so huge?

Or to your point, maybe it's just weird and there's no logic behind it being so huge, but it also depends.

On how you pitch the pitch, the deal too, right?

Like, yes, pilot with the potential to get to 50 million, too, you know, that whole thing.

But right, right, right, right.

We'll see.