Meet Clementine: Instacart's AI Shopping Assistant That Takes "What's for Dinner?" Off Your Plate
Now available to customers across the U.S. and Canada on the Instacart Marketplace, Clementine turns a conversation, grocery list, or recipe into a personalized cart in seconds
Clementine is the latest milestone in Instacart's AI strategy, with its enterprise Cart Assistant already live on retailer storefronts across North America
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9, 2026 /CNW/ -- Instacart (NASDAQ: CART), a leading grocery technology company, today introduced Clementine, its AI-powered grocery shopping assistant, now available to customers across North America on the Instacart Marketplace. The company also announced new grocery partners now live with Cart Assistant, its enterprise AI shopping assistant, giving retailers a branded shopping experience powered by their own catalog and customer data, and made smarter by the same technology and intelligence behind Clementine.
Clementine is built around the hardest parts of grocery shopping: deciding what to make for dinner, shopping the way a family actually eats, and staying on budget without the mental load. A message like "I need a week of budget-friendly kid lunches," "high-protein easy dinners for two," or "order my usuals" becomes a personalized, ready-to-buy cart in seconds. The experience is grounded in what's actually available on shelves in real time from the customer's chosen store, so people can spend less time figuring out what's for dinner and more time actually enjoying it.
"Every night, millions of families ask the same question: 'What's for dinner?' Not knowing the answer, let alone what to shop for, is one of the most universal human experiences, and a problem Instacart is built to solve," said Chris Rogers, CEO of Instacart. "We've spent nearly 15 years learning how families shop and eat, and Clementine puts that knowledge to work. It learns from the preferences you share and the way you've shopped on Instacart. It can help you stay on budget and surface what's actually in stock at your chosen store, handling enough of the weekly planning that the mental load actually feels lighter."
More than 80% of Americans say figuring out what to make for dinner causes them stress, and nearly a third say the hardest part isn't the cooking, it's deciding what to make. More than three in five say they'd be interested in an AI assistant that could help.1
What sets Clementine apart is the foundation behind it: over 1.6 billion lifetime orders, a catalog of more than 2 billion items, and more than 10 million daily inventory signals from nearly 100,000 stores across more than 2,200 retail banners in North America.2 This foundation powers the company's inventory intelligence, helping Clementine understand what's on store shelves in real time, and providing a deep understanding of how families actually eat, what they buy week after week, and what's on sale at their store at any given moment.
What Clementine can do:
- Dinner, sorted. Finding the right recipe shouldn't be half the work. Clementine handles it, generating personalized recipes on the spot or surfacing curated options from trusted publishers.
- Personalized to every household. Whether it's gluten-free, vegetarian, nut-free, or organic, Clementine suggests based on how a household actually eats. An expanded preference center lets customers set their choices once, and Clementine applies them across the experience.
- Savings without the work. Clementine can surface relevant deals and promotions and help customers find lower-cost alternatives, so it's easy to shop on any budget.
- Reorder on autopilot. "Shop my usuals" or "restock my pantry staples" pulls from past order history to assemble a ready-to-buy list in seconds.
- Shop for any occasion. "Everything for a football watch party for 20 people" becomes a tailored list, based on brand preferences and dietary choices.
- Grocery list upload. Snap a photo of a handwritten list, or screenshot a digital one, and Clementine turns it into a list that can be added to cart in seconds.
Early results show a clear progression: customers start with simple tasks like restocking, then graduate to higher-order use cases like recipe discovery. On average, orders placed with Clementine include more items than Instacart's typical basket and exceed the company's industry-leading $115 average basket size.3
"Grocery shopping is one of the most routine things people do, and also one of the most personal," said John Adams, Vice President and Head of Product at Instacart. "What we built with Clementine is a system that understands both of those things -- not just what you need, but how you eat, what you love, and what's on the shelves at your store right now. Whatever you're craving or planning for, Clementine can get you there. The more you use it, the more it feels like a natural part of how your household shops, becoming something you reach for week after week."
The grocery intelligence behind Clementine reaches beyond the Instacart app.
Cart Assistant is Instacart's white-label AI shopping assistant, built for grocers who want to offer their own branded agentic shopping experience on their website and app. It combines Instacart's grocery intelligence with the retailer's catalog and customer data to create a branded assistant that knows what customers need, surfacing relevant deals and recipes, and building carts without requiring customers to search item by item. Grocers can customize everything from the name and tone to loyalty integration and recipe content, so the experience feels entirely their own.
Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group, and Woodman's are now live with Cart Assistant, with ALDI U.S., Harmon's, The Save Mart Companies, Stew Leonard's, and additional partners to follow. For grocers looking to compete in an era of AI-powered shopping, Cart Assistant lets them bring that capability to their own customers, in their own experience.
Instacart has also partnered with Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google so grocery conversations that begin on Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or AI Mode in Google Search can be seamlessly completed on Instacart, where users can place an order from their preferred retailer for delivery or pickup.
Clementine is available today to most U.S. and Canadian Instacart customers through the app and website. Open the Instacart app or website and select a retailer. On mobile, tap the Clementine icon on the top right above the search bar. On desktop, find it at the top of the left-hand navigation bar. Find more information on Clementine here and Cart Assistant here.
About Instacart
Instacart is a leading grocery technology company that partners with more than 2,200 retail banners – representing nearly 100,000 stores – to transform how people shop for the groceries they need from the retailers they trust, while creating flexible earning opportunities for shoppers. Through the Instacart Marketplace, Instacart Enterprise platform, and Instacart Ads ecosystem, the company powers ecommerce, fulfillment, in-store technology, AI offerings, and advertising for partners. For more information, visit www.instacart.com/company. Maplebear Inc. is the registered corporate name of Instacart.
1 This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Instacart from June 2-4, 2026, among 2,059 adults ages 18 and older. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, sample data is accurate to within +/- 2.7 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. This interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, contact [email protected].
2 As of December 31, 2025.
3 As of June 30, 2026.
SOURCE Maplebear Inc. dba Instacart
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