Customerland
Customerland is a podcast about …. Customers. How to get more of them. How to keep them. What makes them tick. We talk to the experts, the technologies and occasionally, actual people – you know, customers – to find out what they’re all about.So if you’re a CX pro, a loyalty marketer, a brand owner, an agency planner … if you’re a CRM & personalization geek, if you’re a customer service / CSAT / NPS nerd – you finally have a home.
Customerland
Smart Carts, Real Revenue
A grocery cart that acts like a high-performing media channel sounds bold, until you hear how it actually works. We sit down with Yaniv Zukerman, CMO at Cust2Mate, to unpack how a retrofit smart cart platform turns the physical aisle into an addressable, measurable environment where shoppers get guidance, retailers unlock new revenue, and brands finally see real attribution at the shelf.
We start with the origin story: a clip-on panel that transforms any existing cart into a smart cart, complete with scanning, guided lists, service counter booking, and on-cart checkout. Then we zoom out to the platform: charging and docking systems, fleet management, and deep integrations with POS and loyalty for identity, context, and closed-loop outcomes. Yanev shares why the system is designed as an open marketplace, making room for retail media networks, CPG campaigns, and third-party apps like recipes, wellness content, reviews, and even local offers that fit the trip.
The core breakthrough is precision. Instead of spray-and-pray store screens, a dedicated cart display travels with each shopper for about 45 minutes, informed by lists, scans, dwell time, and exact location. That enables real-time triggers, personalized promotions, and full attribution from impression to conversion. Retailers see faster checkout, labor relief, and a new profit engine from in-store retail media and data monetization. Brands gain verified reach at the point of decision. And shoppers get less friction, more relevance, and a smoother path to pay-and-go.
We also dig into the playbook for adoption: pilots with clear KPIs, structured integrations, cross-functional teams, and onsite support to train staff and customers. Beyond grocery, we explore use cases in pharmacy and DIY, plus cross-retail partnerships and digital assortment sold from the cart for home delivery. Looking two years ahead, Yanev outlines a future where stores become the most data-rich, accountable channels in retail—real-time, attributable, and truly shopper-centric.
If this vision resonates, follow the show, share it with a retail operator or brand leader who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find conversations like this.
Of course, retail media was one of the hot topics there. And they were all impressed by what we can provide, already provide and can provide down the road when it comes to retail media. But more than that, we got a lot of visits into our booth from retail media platform and retail media networks players, and they were all impressed and really recognized that this is something special, this is something unique, and this is really the real opportunity for them to get into the physical store in a meaningful, in a meaningful way.
SPEAKER_00:Today on Adventures in Customer Land, it's part two of a long-term conversation with Yanev Zuckerman. Yanev and I began this conversation after NRF last year, I believe, when I was introduced to their smart cart solution, which actually is very smart. Having seen a few of these myself that are moderately smart, this one actually is very intelligent. But there's so much to talk about. There's been a lot of water under the bridge, some great announcements, a lot of progress. Yanev, thank you for joining me. Pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Mike. Of course. So uh maybe just to set some context for listeners who may not have heard part one of the conversation. What is what is Customate? What how does it work? What makes it a unique solution?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. So, first of all, Customate is a smart card. Uh and what's unique for us is that we are turning regular cards into a smart card uh by using uh a retrofit solution uh with a clip-on uh smart panel that is attached to regular carts and instantly transforms them into a smart cart. And from that moment, the shopper that starts his shopping uh journey at the store can do many, many things. Uh existing things, new new capabilities, new features that enhances the journey, provides much more value, um, and eventually enables them to pay on the cart, go outside with the cart, with the items, with minimal or without any friction, without any time being wasted, um, and with a lot of additional value uh provided. Uh for sure, the the retailers enjoy that because they get happier customers, which transforms into uh more loyal customers, repeat uh customers, and more income and a lot of uh operational gains and operational efficiencies at the same time.
SPEAKER_00:One of the things that impressed me most about my introduction to Customate was the modularity of the system. That uh, unlike so many other cart systems that I've seen, the Customate solution basically bolts on to their existing cart inventory. You don't need to swap out cards at all. You just kind of here it is, plug it in and go, which which, um, if you think about it, could present some limitations, but there weren't any visible to me when I tested out the solution at NRF. It seemed to be fully, fully uh vastly functional. But there's been so much progress since then. And I've seen in some of your materials, I've spoken to some of your colleagues. You know, if you can, if you can frame up what I saw earlier as hardware with screens, now we're talking to something that feels more like retail media on four wheels. And the data that not only powers that, but is derived from that. Can you talk about that a little bit and how customer views that?
SPEAKER_01:Sure, of course. So you're right. Uh when you look at this from the outside, it looks like a nice screen on wheels, but certainly it's more than that. And I could say that what we do provide is much more than a device or a product. We essentially provide a platform. And that was always part of our vision. We never looked at this as a product. We we looked at what we're doing as a platform and an open modular platform, as you rightly so managed, uh mentioned that it's highly modular. Uh, but it takes time. It takes time to get to this vision, to execute, to materialize this vision. Um and this vision makes sense because uh providing a platform eventually brings much more much more value to the entire ecosystems. To retailers, of course, to the shoppers, of course, but also to brands, to advertisers, to third-party service providers, and of course, also for ourselves and for our shareholders. Uh, we had to start with a product. We had to first develop the product and to improve it over time because we've learned from our own experience, from existing deployments with customers, what needs to get better. Um and uh so we had the first generation, the second generation, and now we're already with the third generation that we have launched uh last year. And this is, I think, the generation you you you might have already seen in NRF next year. I invite you to come this year to NRF and see all the greatest and latest from us, which there are there are many, many, many, many new things. We'll definitely stop by. Um, so uh, but we moved from from uh eventually from a product to a system because in order for that to work, it needs to encompass many additional elements. It's a detachable panel, so you need to charge it. So we need to we we needed to build our charging stations, our docking stations, and we need management tools to manage the fleet and to provide uh uh services. And now we have moved to the last phase, which is really building a platform, a platform that first uh enables much more value and opens our our solutions to third parties, as we mentioned. Um so that's kind of the evolution that we have gone through in the last couple of years.
SPEAKER_00:Can you talk a little bit about um some of those extensions and new activities and new potential that the system view now offers as opposed to the product view? What some of those might be.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so so I uh first I think this uh providing a platform, an open platform, uh, as I mentioned, it provides value to more parties eventually. I really see our platform as a meeting point between the shopper, the retailer, and advertisers or service providers or um uh CPGs. Uh we really provide the meeting point between this triangle. And it provides and really unlocks lots of value for all of them, for all of those parties. For retailers, for of course, other than the improvements that I've discussed before, it opens up uh new polls of revenues and profits, uh, which are desperately looking for and uh seeking uh first in-store retail media, which we all talk about retail media, but retail media currently is not really in the in-store, in the physical store, uh uh and not in a dedicated sense, and not in a personalized sense, and not in attributed sense. We really provide this, we we enable this. The ability to monetize data and to sell this, that's another opportunity for retailers. That's of course, on top of all the operational gains that we already provide them: uh faster checkout, labor relief, um enhanced shoppers' uh experiences that will lead to loyal customers. So that's the retailers. If we're talking about brand CPGs, we provide access, very smart access into the physical store and into the uh connecting, being able to connect with the shoppers when it matters, in real time, while they are doing their shopping, while they are making their decisions, and it can be very personalized and it could it could be effective, the impact is measurable, and we can help them also close the loop. What we provide them is the tool to do everything in an attributed manner. So every dollar spent in advertisement campaigns could be measured and could they could immediately see the effect of those investments. And for the shoppers, of course, is more value because we provide them more services, more possibilities, more offers, but with the relevant ones. The relevant ones, when and when it's relevant and in the right spot.
SPEAKER_00:I'm I'm thinking of how that gets worked out practically in physical retail media, because you're right, the as explosive as retail media has been, the physical in-store presence still is just a tiny component of it, largely because those are hardware-driven solutions that can be really difficult and complicated to deploy. On the other hand, let's just talk this through for a minute because on a smart cart situation, if you've got some sort of screen in front of you and the shopper has logged in or it somehow understands that this shopper is a member of the loyalty program or is a frequent shopper or whatever that is, they can be identified, their preferences can be loaded in, and you can be serving them everything from personalized ads on the screen to even, I would, you know, uh kind of geolocated messaging, depending on where they are in the store, which is something that um again, I've spoken to countless retail media technology providers. Nobody can offer. Nobody can offer anything like that, which I think is uh is got to be huge potential. I'd love to be, I'd love to hear how significant that function is on Customates roadmap. I happen to think it's massive, but I'm sitting here on the outside, you know, considering everything else that uh the customate solution provides, how how big a factor is the retail media function?
SPEAKER_01:It's it's dramatic. It's dramatic, it's capturing a significant part of our thinking, uh our roadmap, uh our business development activities, our messaging, uh because we see a huge potential there. And currently, when we scope the universe, we don't see any alternative to ushering retail media in a meaningful way, in a valuable way, into the physical store. And this is something we get feedback for that on a daily basis. I just came back from the grocery shop in Las Vegas uh three weeks ago. And other than of course meeting a lot of retailers there that we of course retail media was one of the hot topics there. Uh and they were all impressed by what we can provide, already provide and can provide down the road when it comes to retail media. But more than that, we got a lot of visits into our booth from retail media platform and retail media networks players, and they were all impressed and really recognized that this is something special, this is something unique, and this is really the real opportunity for them to get into the physical store in a meaningful, in a meaningful way. Um having those out-of-door screens or digital screens that just being spread out in the store, it's kind of spray and pray approach. You know, you put uh the advertisers, the advertisements there, and you just hope that the right person will see the right ad at the right time and that it will lead into conversion. But how can you be sure and how can you measure that? It's only after the fact, and it's it's we know, we know immediately, and more than that, it's uh you think certainly when you compare it to the physical elements today that are used for in-store advertisements, but also as I mentioned for the digital ones, and several elements that are unique for our smart are unique for smart cards in general and specifically for us. First, think about it. Do you have a dedicated screen in front of your eyes for let's say 45 minutes? That's traveling with the shopper. It's traveling with the shopper. You can't avoid it really, and you don't want to avoid it, but you can't avoid it. It's it's there for you and it's only for you at that particular time frame. And the average is about 45 minutes to 50 minutes of a visit for in a grocery store in a large supermarket. So it's there, it's with you. Then we know whatever you're doing. And when I'm saying we, I mean it's us together with the retailer, because as I said, as I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, we are connected to their own systems, to the point of sale system, but also to the loyalty clubs. So whatever is available there could also be poured in to the data that is relevant to make the right offers and the right decisions at the right time. But on more than that, we provide specific understandings of things that are happening in real time, and only we know about them. For example, you uploaded a shopping list, the shopper uploads a shopping list to the cart. Immediately, this is a plan. We know what they intend to buy right now. They are starting to scan products and add them to the cards. We know which which product has been scanned, which product has been added to the cart, or which product has been removed from the cart. When they book their turn or a spot on one of the service counters, we know they are going to go and buy cheese or fish or going to the pharmacy. This is something you can work with. So we know where they are at the store, we know what they're touching, what on the screen, what they're looking for. All of those, we know what their dwell time, we know when they're move, we know where they're standstill. All of those elements are a gold mine for decisions and triggers that can trigger the right offer, the right promotion, the right ad at the right time, and it's relevant. It's relevant.
SPEAKER_00:We're we do a fair amount of work in um customer behavior research. And that kind of granular, moment-by-moment emotional changes, what's registering as positive, what's registering as negative, and how big or small those registrations end up is traditionally really difficult. And I mean really difficult to get in physical space. We can understand it in a digital space really, really easily, but in physical space, it's just, you know, yeah, there's some workarounds. But I'm imagining that the customate solution um connected with the right kinds of technology could detect and register those emotional uh it's called relevancies, which could which could power so much decisioning for the retail media networks, for the retailers, for the CPGs, to understand what's really happening there beyond just the rational value of what the offer is, but what they're feeling right there as well. And um I'd be interested to see if and how that could ever get worked out using your solution because right now it's such valuable data, and there's really no sensible, consistent way to gather it. So I'll put that one on your roadmap.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe we can connect some sensors there directly to the shopper in some manner and uh really measure their behavioral mood, their mood or behavioral, or yeah, it would be fun to test it anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Um so a couple of things come to mind, and I I've been thinking about this ever since our first conversation as well. But one of the great things about your solution is that it's modular, is that this this technology fits onto existing cart inventories. Nonetheless, there's still some work to do because there are there are retailers out there with thousands and thousands of shopping carts. And deploying on that scale, I don't care if it's a small and easy thing or not, but just because of that scale, it's something you have to contend with. And I'm just curious, when you are selling your solution into a grocer, what does that conversation look like? And how do you describe the actual lift? Is it is there some is there some sort of mental shift that the CTO is going to have to go through to figure this out? Or what's it really like to implement?
SPEAKER_01:Uh mental mental shift, it's it's a good way to phrase it. I I think we all know retailers are a tough cookie in most cases, and and uh uh very conservative, and rightly so. You know, it's not easy, it's huge operations, and it's not easy to make significant changes. So, first and foremost, and what we realize and understand, it takes time. It takes time, and you need to start small, you need to start with a point of uh PLC or a pilot. We need to prove our our value, uh but also to portray a clear view and process how we grow with them and how we continue to support them. So it's about the product, it's about the company, it's about the ability to support, it's about the robot. All of those elements need to come into place from the get-go. But we need to start with all cases. In all cases, we need to start uh uh uh with a proof of concept and with a pilot, and we have a very structured way to do this. We have a lot of experience doing this, we have done this several times with different retailers, different locations, geographies around the world. Um but I think more than everything, we realized and uh we are trying to help the retailers realize that it's not just adapting uh a technology, it's really about change management. They're changing must something fundamentally. And in order for smart cards to be significant, it will drive significant change, but it's it is a significant change in the operations eventually and the way their shoppers are doing their shopping and behave. And it takes time and it needs to be managed in that way. So, how do we do that? First, we we help them by starting from the beginning going through very structured processes, structured processes of understanding together what is unique for this retailer, their specific needs, specific requirements, what systems do they use, what process do they use, how their shoppers behave, how their stores look like, and turning all of those into a very structured plan of how to build first and foremost the pilot and later down the road the deployment, the commercial deployment. And then we run to a very structured and well-designed integration process. Okay, something that takes a couple of weeks, up to two, two and a half months. Eventually at the end of this process, our systems are working together in concert. More than that, we need to establish together with them the right team. They have to build their own team, which is committed, multidisciplinary, has the right charter. We need to set objectives from day one together, to agree on the objectives, to decide on KPIs, to make sure that together with the steering committee and the shared team, we measure and how do we advance and how do we reach and how do we accomplish all those objectives and measure those KPIs. More than that, we provide it's not something we can do really remotely. Our teams are there at all the early phases, and until we understand and realize that they are good on their own, we are there with them, working hand in hand with their own teams at the stores, supporting everything from the planning, the deployment, the training, the service, even customer service, shopper service. In many times, we provide in the first phases our own people to help service their customers at the early stages to make sure that everything is going smoothly inside. It's a new process, it's a new system, it's a new device. You need education there and you need training.
SPEAKER_00:Um just uh from a let's let's say from a start to finish standpoint, from the moment a deal is signed with a new retailer until the system is fully deployed, what would that timeline look like typically if there is a typical?
SPEAKER_01:I'm not sure there is a typical. Uh and uh let's let's first talk about the first phase. It's from from the start to the time that we you have, uh uh, I would say, uh working, executed. We've executed the pilot, a successful pilot. That that is a process that will take, I would say, uh several months. It will take something like three months to from the get-go until we have the pilot ready to be launched. And then a typical pilot could take between three months, up to six months. It it really depends on the size, on the complexity. Uh, and then it takes time, of course, to move to the decision to deploy uh to deploy at scale. And how much time that would take, this is really something that really changes by by by retailers. I'm sure. And as you know, the this entire industry right now is only is still at relatively embryonic phases. So most deployments are not that large at the at that point. So it might take a couple of months, it might take even a couple of years. It really depends on the size of the retailer, whether they have 50 stores, 500 stores, or 5,000 stores, and how much uh of coverage and penetration they want within their chain.
SPEAKER_00:The the idea that this is now a platform, and that what you're developing looks to me more like a marketplace with different applications that can be attached and embedded, different functionality for the customer and for the retailer. It looks like a very expansive view of what this solution is right now. Are you planning on other verticals beyond grocery at this point, or is this still for the foreseeable future, uh, grocery only?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so so right now our focus, I would say, is mostly on grocery, uh, but we are not limited to grocery. Um I would say that um there are other other segments, other verticals uh that could really benefit from a smart card or the capabilities of a smart card and a smart card platform. Uh, for example, pharmacy and healthcare. Think about it. We can really help where the card can enable personalized guidance for shoppers, there medication reminders, uh, for example, wellness uh content delivery while shopping. Another vertical could be the DIY, the only improvement uh uh vertical, where we can really help shoppers and retailers, of course, there uh guide the shoppers through their visits. Uh think of a project. You have it, you have a checklist, you have ideas on devices that you need, on things that you need in order to complete your your project, uh some advice, some some some uh some professional advice that you can get on cart at on the card. And there are other uh other verticals as well, but it's not only about other verticals. If you think about our platform as an enablement of a marketplace, we are opening up our capabilities and the business potential for other potential partners. So we we've thought we've discussed retail media, so advertisers for sure, but it's much more than that. Think about it when shoppers are visiting the even the grocery store using the carts, that's a golden opportunity to provide them with other services, financial services, hospitality services. I I know you're interested in specific food because those are the things you have purchased. That's a great opportunity, maybe to offer you a visit to a nice Italian restaurant, for example, or uh to offer you uh a coupon or a deal at the pizza just uh across the street, and you can pick up the pizza on your way home. We can open up the platform for the retailer's own marketplace or third-party marketplaces, and to expand the assortment that is available to you, not physically at the store, but digitally. And this is something you can buy on cart at the store, pay now, and get it delivered to your home, for example, a TV or or or additional services. It we can we can lead to partnerships between different types of retailers. Think about it. Uh it's you're doing a shopping at a grocery shop, but now you can get offers for toys from a partnering uh toys retailer that can sell their own goods and own products for you at this particular moment. It's a very similar uh experience to how you do your shopping online at home. The good thing is that you're doing it at the physical store, and we get more information and more understandings and more triggers that can help us uh and help third parties to provide the right offer. And there are many more other opportunities that our platform can really uh connect with uh other other application players, for example, that can provide you specific applications that are relevant, a recipe, uh uh reviews, specific apps that might be very relevant for the shopper at the right moment at the store.
SPEAKER_00:Let's let's look out a few years from where we are right now. And uh I would say that you're at the very, very leading edge of what's happening in in-cart data and uh engagement. What do you think that's gonna look like in say I was gonna say five years, but five years is it could be a hundred at this point. Let's let's say two years out. How has the shopper's journey changed compared to where we are right now?
SPEAKER_01:Uh it's a good question. It's a good question. I think um uh first and foremost, I think everything will be easier for the shopper at the store. Uh for sure. Uh otherwise they will not go to stores. Everything really will take 100% of the friction outside of the store. Um I think if I'm looking at what we can provide and how it will translate into the overall experience of the shoppers and what retailers can gain and uh and uh and advertise as the CPGs in two or three years from now, uh I think the store can be can become really the most the most measurable, um most measurable, the most data-rich, uh shopper-centric uh um channel in retail, maybe even more than digital channels, because eventually it's physical and you get the the actual physical experience there, which is really unique. And I I think if we're looking at my at our role in this, we can we we can provide the platform, uh the foundation that makes it really uh possible. Um we it's possible to really provide a unified, accountable media channel. It that's the the store will become that way. Uh because it today it's not really measurable, not in real time. It will be measurable, 100% measurable and addressable in real time. Everything could be verified, could be attributed. Um so I can see that a lot of dollar spendings will migrate to the dollar to the physical store, and that will be incremental to trade marketing dollars that are today available for retailers and the and the advertisers. Um what else? Um data, more and more and data, and I think data will be a big opportunity. The store will be really a gold miner for data for the retailers for to enjoy, for for um for companies like us to enjoy in concert with the retailers. It could be really turned into real a real flywheel of monetization of the data and more businesses and more partnerships that will really tear down the wall between digital and physical, between uh different channels, and even between different retailers and different uh entities in the ecosystem.
SPEAKER_00:I'm I'm thinking of uh what in-store retail media could look like in a couple of years, very short years, and uh I see a lot of that being powered by solutions like yours. Yeah, and if I can't thank you enough for uh, first of all, dealing with our schedules and trying to get that back on the books again, but for spending the time here and uh explaining what progress looks like from custom aids perspective because it's really interesting. I congratulate you on your solution and we'll of course be paying attention to it. So, with all that, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Thank you very much, Mike. Thank you for uh inviting me and for the opportunity to discuss all those uh exciting uh evolutions of our industry.
