Ivy Liu
St. Louis-based regional grocer Schnucks just launched a new AI assistant, but behind it is a larger idea around how agents could eventually take over the shopping process and help people eat healthier
Schnucks, which operates 112 grocery stores in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, announced its partnership with the Boston-based agentic commerce tech company VitalityIP on July 22. Through this deal, it plans to launch an AI shopping assistant for nutrition guidance, meal ideas and product recommendations. It will be found in the Schnucks Rewards app and Schnucks’ website later this summer
VitalityIP was quietly co-founded last year by Michael Connor, its chief technology officer, who previously was a global generative AI product manager at Amazon Web Services and before that worked at Coca-Cola for 10 years. More centrally to the startup’s health priorities, the other co-founder is Sarah Hoit, who also serves as chairman of the Global Brain Health Initiative by Social Impact Partners and previously was chief social impact officer at BioVie, which develops therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative conditions and advanced liver disease.
The grocer and startup co-developed the technology behind the assistant using customer and store inventory data as well as VitalityIP’s AI and proprietary database of health insights and ingredient-level product data. Schnucks is the first to debut VitalityIP’s platform, but it was designed for white-label integration by retailers nationwide
Executives at both Schnucks and VitalityIP told Modern Retail that the platform is just the beginning of a transition from customer-initiated shopping to one in which AI agents take control of people’s eating habits
“At some point, you’re going to have an agent that is going to be shopping for you,” said Tom Henry, chief data and information officer for Schnucks. “It’s going to know your palate profile … and this is the basket you want to purchase, and it’s going to shop for you. That is coming.”
Hoit said her organization’s vision is to impact global health by influencing eating habits. “We can get people off of diabetes drugs in 10 to 12 weeks if they change their diet; it has profound implications,” Hoit said. “To me, this isn’t one grocery chain deciding to do something; this is a very large story that is going to affect everyone, and we’re just in this moment where it can happen.”
That begins with collecting data on individuals’ health conditions and dietary needs or preferences
Henry said he wanted Schnucks’ assistant to leverage the grocer’s knowledge of shopping behavior to cater to each individual’s palate, offering different ways to prepare foods that align with their palate profile and budget. It “takes the abrasion out of planning meals that meet your family’s nutritional needs and actually provides a little bit of … enjoyment in conducting the activity,” he said
People can put in their profile whether they like or dislike something or have a specific allergy. Products they can’t or won’t eat will not be recommended to them, and those preferences carry through to any future conversations. The assistant can also tell them what would pair well with certain dishes
“It aligns its recipes, and ultimately the actual baskets that you’re going to develop, to your dietary needs or desires, allowing you to go and cook these meals [that incorporate] food that you like,” Henry said. “We wanted it to be much more than just a search bar where you say, ‘Tell me about these products.’”
VitalityIP takes into account where the shoppers are, where they live, what they have access to and what their cost parameters are, as well as their health conditions, allergies and the needs of their family members — like if someone’s daughter has a medical condition or their dad has heart disease. It can also give recommendations tailored to people on diabetes or GLP-1 medications. Shoppers can delete conditions from their profile if they no longer want those recommendations
“Every consumer has something in their family they’re trying to solve,” Hoit said. “We’ve mapped back to every [International Classification of Diseases] code, every disease state. We want to have recipes that can honor what that family is dealing with.”
The assistant has navigation features within the store — so people can ask it, “Where’s the ketchup?” and it will tell them what aisle it is in. Schnucks has robots that traverse the stores so the company knows where every item in every store on every shelf is. The assistant also has access to Schnucks’ library of digital offers, coupons and personalized offers generated for loyalty customers, so they can apply deals as they shop
“With [customer] permissions, you have to build a solid data foundation,” Henry said. “There are multiple aspects of that. You’ve got to know the products in your store, and you have to have well-organized, high-quality data on the products.”
The field of AI agents in retail is quickly becoming crowded; 21% of retailers in 2026 have generative AI chatbots, up from just 5% in 2025 a senior director analyst for Gartner who consults CMOs as well as digital commerce and marketing leaders, said VitalityIP’s platform could have a competitive advantage because it enables consumers to shop based on nutritional needs or goals rather than just by asking general questions or for pricing
“AI provides a lot of value and trust to make sure that the types of food you’re buying align with the nutritional or fitness goals that you have, or your food allergies,” Carlucci said
Paul Zwillenberg, CEO of Kantar, said the Schnucks launch signals a shift in retail where AI replaces static product aisles with goal-driven health and meal engines. He added that this will mean that, in the future, brands won’t have to compete as much for shelf space or search rankings, but instead for the most trusted, credible answer from AI agents
“The path to purchase is no longer shaped solely by consumers. It’s increasingly mediated by AI,” Zwillenberg said in an email. “As agents move upstream to recommend what shoppers should buy, not just where to find it, brands must compete for algorithmic trust as much as consumer attention. The winners will be the brands that are most credible, relevant and easy for AI to recommend.”
Hoit said the sophistication of Schnucks’ product data made the retailer an ideal partner to show what’s possible with agentic shopping. But, she said, VitalityIP can also work with grocers that are smaller or less technologically equipped. She said the company is beginning to sign contracts with other retailers
“We’ll meet the grocer exactly where they are,” Hoit said, adding that, often, grocers have data spread across different systems. “One of the beauties of what we can also do with the system is assimilate that into a way that the data that’s there talks to each other.”
