Fairprice Finest at Punggol Coast Mall has Smart Carts, wine tasting taps, and health AI recommender

Grocery shopping in Singapore is about to become a lot smarter, and we’re here for it (as long as it doesn’t turn into a Black Mirror-esque scenario, we hope). 

Fairprice Group has launched what appears to be the world’s first gen-AI-powered supermarket at Punggol Coast Mall,  incorporating gen-AI features and solutions to make grocery shopping a lot more seamless, tailored, and simpler.

We got a glimpse of what the supermarkets of tomorrow will look like at the Fairprice Finest outlet launch last Friday (August 28) at the Punggol Digital District, dubbed as Singapore’s soon-to-be “Silicon Valley”.

Smarter shopping, tailored recommendations

First up, are its Smart Carts. While these are not new, having been first piloted at Sengkang Grand Mall earlier this year, Punggol Coast Mall’s outlet sees a bigger roll-out of 20 such carts.

If you’ve not experienced them before, these smart trolleys comprise built-in displays that not only help you locate products easily with real-time wayfinding, it also highlights promotions and related items, depending on the product you’re looking for.

For those absolutely navigationally-challenged: When you come closer to your item, a little red light on its price tag also starts blinking, showing you right where it is. 

Similar to Fairprice’s already-ongoing Scan and Go programme, where users can scan, bag, and check-out their own purchases as they go around the outlet using their own devices, these carts also enable you to scan your purchases along the way, and check out on the Fairprice Group app. 

As you walk around the store, you may have noticed, too, that the whole Punggol Coast Mall outlet is equipped with digital price cards.

Not only does this allow for easy switching up of promotions and prices, and for wayfinding with the Smart Carts, but is also more sustainable in the long run. 

Of course, the technology isn’t just confined to food items. On level 2, at its Unity section, you can jump onto the in-store body composition analyser to get your height, weight, and body composition measured.

After you scan the results sheet with the store’s gen-AI-powered Health and Wellness recommender, you’ll get a detailed analysis of your results, as well as health supplement recommendations you can get directly at Unity itself. 

This is the first Finest outlet to have such a service, so it’ll be worth getting yourself measured, too, if you happen to swing by Punggol Coast Mall.

One for the wine lovers

Healthy things aside, if you love a good glass of wine or two (like us!), you’ll want to pop up to the wines section on level 2. There, scanning a QR code or tapping your phone on its Near Field Communication or NFC-enabled label will bring up Fairprice’s Digital Wine Sommelier.

Not only will the “sommelier” be able to recommend you wines off Fairprice’s shelves in real time, based on your preferences, but it will also alert you if there’s an ongoing promotion for the highlighted wine choice. 

Still need more help? The Punggol Coast Mall outlet also comes with a wine and cocktail tasting station — the first-of–its-kind in a Fairprice Finest store.

First, you’ll need to verify your age via Singpass before you can choose the wine you’d like to try. Then you’ll pay for your sample (S$3 per 25ml for the wines), collect a wine glass, wait for the wine to be dispensed, and enjoy.

At the time of our visit, there were three wines on display at the wine tasting station (two reds and one white). While the price and sampling portion is reasonable, a single storage chamber for both types of wines means that the white wine comes lukewarm — not great, but it’ll do. 

The cocktails are from spirits distributor House of Amber Nectar, and choices include the ubiquitous Singapore Sling, as well as a Jinro highball, off the popular soju label it stocks. 

Riding on the K-high, too, is the outlet’s international zone, which has a wide selection of Lotte’s Good Today products and other items from Korea. While it doesn’t have the DIY ramyeon bar as the Lotte Mart Express at VivoCity does, it has most of the Lotte items you’d expect to find there. 

What it does have, however, is The Grocer Bar, where you can grab drinks and try its outlet-exclusive cocktails such as the Punggol Blue and the Punggol Spritz (S$15 each), and The Grocer Cafe. This outlet also marks its first collaboration with local bakery Edith Pattisserie.

Lest you think all of these are only for the north-easterners, Fairprice’s Store of Tomorrow (SOT) has committed to pilot more than 20 new digital solutions annually over the next three years. 

So, while there isn’t official word on this yet, we’d like to think this means we’ll see these technologies in the Fairprice outlets nearest to us, sooner rather than later.