Pick n Pay has switched on an AI shopping companion called Penny inside its asap! app, and in this episode of the TechCentral Show, retail executive for omnichannel Enrico Ferigolli takes editor Duncan McLeod through what it does and why it matters.
Built on Google’s Gemini models, Penny lets customers build a grocery basket by asking for what they want in their own words – by voice, text or photo – instead of searching and scrolling. Tap the “Ask” button, request a carbonara recipe, and Penny returns the method alongside a carousel of options for each ingredient to drop into the basket. It handles re-orders, meal planning to a budget and ingredient substitutions, and it reads photographs, too: Ferigolli describes snapping a handwritten shopping list and having Penny build the basket from it.
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In the conversation, Ferigolli is candid about the limits. Penny does not place orders yet – it assembles the basket and hands the customer back to checkout – and its language support, while broad, is stronger by voice than by text and still maturing for South Africa’s African languages. He explains why Pick n Pay tested several large language models before settling on Gemini, how the system draws on the app’s own search, order history and Smart Shopper data rather than plugging Gemini straight into its databases, and where a retail-media layer fits in.
For more detail on the launch, see TechCentral’s full report on Penny.
Ferigolli discusses:
- How conversational shopping changes the asap! experience
- Why Gemini won on accuracy, speed and cost
- What Penny can and can’t do at launch
- The multilingual and multimodal ambitions behind it
- How the 2025 asap! rebuild set this up, and what comes next
Pick n Pay is “a little bit behind” in online grocery, Ferigolli concedes in the podcast – but with Penny and the features to follow, he reckons it will “get ahead really, really fast”.
Don’t miss the discussion.
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