🤖 Agentic shopping · The next wave

Agentic Grocery Shopping:
The European Reality.

AI agents are beginning to handle grocery shopping autonomously — finding products, comparing prices, and building baskets without manual browsing. The shift is real. What's missing in Europe is the data layer to make it work. This is what Pepesto builds.

27+
EU chains
13
Countries
7
Currencies
Daily
Price refresh
1
JSON schema
1 — Definition

What is agentic grocery shopping?

Traditional online grocery shopping is manual: visit a website, search for each item, compare prices across tabs, add things to a basket yourself. It is online shopping, not intelligent shopping.

Agentic grocery shopping replaces that process entirely. An AI agent — powered by a large language model — receives a goal in plain language and handles the full journey autonomously: querying live supermarket data, reasoning about options, comparing prices across chains, and returning a complete grounded answer.

You say: "Find me the ingredients for pasta carbonara for 4 people, cheapest in Amsterdam, under €10." The agent queries Albert Heijn and Jumbo in real time, accounts for current promotional prices, and responds with facts.

Definition

Agentic grocery shopping is when an AI agent autonomously handles a multi-step grocery task — product discovery, cross-chain price comparison, and basket building — using live supermarket data, without requiring manual input at each step.

Pepesto AI Agent · Live data · ah.nl + jumbo.com
Cheapest pasta carbonara ingredients for 4, Amsterdam, under €10.
AH wins: €8.34. Guanciale is on promo this week (€1.89 vs €2.79 normal).

Spaghetti 500g €1.09 · Guanciale 150g €1.89↓ · Eggs ×6 €1.79 · Pecorino 100g €2.49 · Pepper €1.09
2 — The structural challenge

Why Europe is different from the US.

Instacart built agentic grocery infrastructure for one market with one dominant aggregator. OpenAI Operator launched with US retailers. Europe is structurally different — and that structural gap is where the opportunity sits.

🏪
No single Instacart equivalent
The US has one dominant grocery aggregator. Europe has 27 major independent chains across 13 countries with no common infrastructure, no shared API, and no single data source.
🗣️
13 languages, not one
Albert Heijn names products in Dutch. Rewe in German. Esselunga in Italian. The same product has a different name, unit format, and category path in every country.
💶
Many currencies in active use
GBP, EUR, CHF, PLN, BGN, NOK, DKK and more. An agent comparing prices across markets must normalise every response into a common format before it can reason about cost.
🔧
27 independent integrations
Each European supermarket runs its own tech stack with its own auth, rate limits, and data schema. Building three integrations takes months. Maintaining all 27 requires permanent dedicated engineering.
🇺🇸 The US situation

Instacart aggregates major US chains under one API. OpenAI Operator connects to that infrastructure. A US user asking an AI agent to "reorder my weekly shop from Whole Foods" works because the data layer exists.

🇪🇺 The European gap

A European user asking the same question about Albert Heijn, Rewe, or Migros ... well, it's difficult. No equivalent to Instacart exists. No US AI platform has deep integrations with European chains. The agentic grocery gap in Europe is structural, significant, and currently unfilled. Pepesto is the answer.

3 — The infrastructure

How Pepesto's knowledge graph makes it possible.

The hardest problem in European agentic grocery isn't building an API — it's entity resolution. The same physical product has a completely different identity in every country. Without a knowledge graph that maps those identities, cross-chain comparison is impossible.

Pepesto's grocery knowledge graph maps product entities across all 27 chains. It was engineered specifically for the European grocery fragmentation problem, drawing on the same entity resolution principles used at search-engine scale.

1
Entity identification — same product, different identity
Barilla Spaghettoni No.7 1kg is named differently at every chain. The knowledge graph identifies all variants as the same entity — entity_name: "Spaghetti" — regardless of local naming, enabling cross-chain reasoning.
2
Cross-chain price comparison at entity level
Once entities are resolved, a single query can compare the price of the same product at Albert Heijn (€1.49 EUR), Tesco (£1.35 GBP), and Migros (CHF 2.95). An AI agent can answer "where is this cheapest in Europe?" with a grounded, real answer — not a guess.
3
Category and substitution reasoning
The knowledge graph understands category hierarchies across languages. When a user asks for "guanciale" and it's unavailable at their local chain, the agent can reason across equivalent products in the same category — because entities are mapped, not just named.
4 — Technical architecture

LLM + real-time grocery API + entity resolution.

Four layers work together. Understanding each one explains why agentic European grocery has been hard to build — and why Pepesto exists.

1
User states an intent in natural language
"Find me ingredients for pasta carbonara for 4, under €10, cheapest in Amsterdam." No product names, URLs, or supermarket knowledge required.
2
LLM reasons, plans, and calls the API
A large language model (GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini — any model) interprets the intent, identifies required products, user selects which chains to query, and issues api calls with the appropriate supermarket_domain parameters.
3
Pepesto returns live data in unified schema
Same JSON structure whether the agent queried "ah.nl", "shop.rewe.de", or "tesco.com". Daily updated pricing, promotional prices, unit pricing — normalised. No per-chain parsing in the agent.
4
Knowledge graph enables entity-level reasoning
The knowledge graph entity fields allow the LLM to compare equivalent products across chains by resolved identity — not by attempting to match inconsistent product names across languages itself.
// Step 1: User intent → LLM
intent: "pasta carbonara, 4 people,
         under €10, Amsterdam"

// Step 2: Agent calls Pepesto for AH + Jumbo POST /api/catalog { “supermarket_domain”: “ah.nl” }

POST /api/catalog { “supermarket_domain”: “jumbo.com” }

// Step 3: Identical schema, both responses { “entity_name”: “Spaghetti”, “kg_verified”: true, “price”: 109, // EUR cents “currency”: “EUR”, “price_per_meausure_unit”: “0.34 / 100g” “quantity_str”: “1kg” “accurate_grams”: “1000” }

// Step 4: LLM compares entities, responds “AH total: €8.34. Guanciale on promo. Jumbo: €9.12. Adding AH basket now."

5 — Comparison

Every major AI platform has the same
European grocery problem.

2025 and 2026 have seen a wave of agentic shopping launches from the biggest players in AI. OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Perplexity, Microsoft — all have built or announced agentic shopping capabilities. None of them have solved European grocery. The data infrastructure doesn't exist in their stacks. Pepesto is that infrastructure.

OpenAI
Operator + ChatGPT Instant Checkout
Launched September 2025 via the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) with Stripe. Partners include Instacart, Walmart, DoorDash, Target — all US. No European supermarket integrations.
No EU grocery data
Google
Gemini + Universal Commerce Protocol
Launched January 2026 with 20+ partners including Walmart, Shopify, and PayPal. The UCP enables buy-direct through Google AI Mode and Gemini. Partners are predominantly US and global brands — not European grocery chains.
No EU grocery data
Amazon
Rufus + "Buy for Me"
Amazon's AI shopping agent operates within its own walled ecosystem. Rufus searches Amazon's catalogue; "Buy for Me" can purchase from third-party sites — but Amazon controls which sites it accesses. European supermarkets are not included.
Closed ecosystem, no EU chains
Perplexity
Agentic shopping via PayPal
Perplexity partnered with PayPal ahead of the 2025 holiday season for agentic checkout. Its shopping capabilities focus on product discovery and web-level search — no live supermarket catalog integration, no EU chain coverage.
No live EU grocery data
Microsoft
Copilot Checkout
Microsoft launched Copilot Checkout in early 2026, joining the AI shopping race alongside OpenAI and Google. Like the others, it operates within a US-centric merchant network with no meaningful European grocery chain coverage.
No EU grocery data
Pepesto
European grocery API — the missing data layer
27 European supermarket chains across 13 countries, unified JSON schema, daily refresh with live promotional prices. Works as a tool call for any of the platforms above — giving their agents the EU grocery data they lack.
27 EU chains · live today
CapabilityAll major platforms (EU grocery)Pepesto + any of the above
Live EU supermarket dataNone have EU chain integrations27 chains live, daily refresh
Pricing accuracy for EUUnavailable or very hard to getLive prices including current promotions
Cross-chain comparisonNot possible — no data sourceSame schema across all 27 chains
Multi-currencyNo normalised EU currency handlingGBP, EUR, CHF, PLN, BGN, NOK, DKK
Product entity resolutionLLM guesses across 13 languagesKnowledge graph maps entities across all chains
Integration maintenanceYou build and maintain each chain yourselfPepesto monitors and repairs continuously
Time to first EU grocery queryWeeks of integration work per chain5 minutes — API key, one POST call
6 — Use cases

Who is using agentic grocery shopping today.

The category is early but real. Developers and product teams are already building on top of Pepesto — here are the patterns emerging in the market.

🤖
AI shopping assistants
Consumer apps and voice assistants where users ask grocery questions in natural language. Pepesto is the tool call that grounds the agent's answer with live data with current price.
🍽️
AI-powered meal planners
Apps that generate a shopping list from a meal plan and route each ingredient to the cheapest available chain. The agent handles substitution when items are unavailable or over budget.
💰
Budget optimisation tools
Apps that compare a user's regular shopping list across Albert Heijn, Jumbo, and Plus — or Tesco, Sainsbury's, and Asda — to find the cheapest basket that week, automatically.
🔔
Grocery automation agents
Agents that run on a schedule — checking whether items on a user's regular list have hit promotional prices and alerting them, or automatically placing orders when a threshold is met.
📊
Nutrition-aware shopping agents
Agents that match dietary requirements to real supermarket products — with full macros, allergen data, and unit pricing — then build a basket that satisfies both nutritional and budget constraints.
🏢
Enterprise retail intelligence
Agents built for brands that monitor pricing, promotions, and availability across 13 European markets simultaneously — flagging competitive shifts without manual checking.
Chains available to your agent today
🇳🇱 Albert Heijn 🇳🇱 Jumbo 🇬🇧 Tesco 🇬🇧 Sainsbury's 🇬🇧 Waitrose 🇬🇧 Asda 🇬🇧 Morrisons 🇩🇪 Rewe 🇨🇭 Migros 🇨🇭 Coop CH 🇧🇪 Colruyt 🇧🇪 Delhaize 🇮🇹 Esselunga 🇪🇸 Carrefour ES 🇵🇱 Frisco 🇩🇪 Kaufland — soon 🇩🇪 Lidl — soon 🇪🇸 Mercadona — soon 🇬🇧 Ocado — soon
Full chain documentation and API reference →
7 — FAQ

Common questions.

Not covered here? Get in touch →

What is agentic grocery shopping?+
Agentic grocery shopping is when an AI agent autonomously handles the grocery process on your behalf — finding products, comparing prices across supermarkets, and building a shopping basket — without you manually searching or browsing. You describe what you need in natural language; the agent queries live supermarket data and returns a grounded result. It is part of the broader shift toward agentic AI where LLMs take multi-step actions on behalf of users.
Can I use OpenAI Operator to shop at European supermarkets?+
OpenAI Operator and similar US-built AI agents currently lack live integrations with European supermarkets like Albert Heijn, Rewe, Migros, or Tesco. Without a real-time data source, and domain knowledge, the agent struggles to complete the task in reasonable time. Pepesto fills this gap — a unified REST API covering 27 European chains that any AI agent built on OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini can call directly to get live pricing and product data.
What is grocery automation?+
Grocery automation means using software — increasingly AI agents — to handle repetitive grocery tasks automatically: building shopping lists, comparing prices across supermarkets, identifying promotions, and placing orders. Pepesto enables grocery automation at European scale by providing a single REST API covering 27 supermarkets across 13 countries, refreshed daily, with a consistent JSON schema that any automation layer can consume without per-chain custom code.
Is there an AI grocery agent for Europe?+
Yes. Pepesto provides the data infrastructure for AI grocery agents operating in Europe — covering Albert Heijn, Rewe, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Migros, Carrefour Spain, and 21 more European chains. Developers integrate the Pepesto API as a tool call in their LLM pipelines to give agents real-time access to European grocery data. Pepesto also provides a ready-built AI grocery agent product.
What is agentic shopping in Europe?+
Agentic shopping is the broader category where AI agents handle multi-step shopping tasks autonomously. In Europe specifically, agentic shopping faces unique challenges: 27 major supermarket chains across 13 countries, 7 currencies, and 13 languages, with no single aggregator equivalent to Instacart in the US. Pepesto addresses the grocery segment of agentic shopping in Europe, with live data from all major European chains in a unified schema that any LLM can consume.
Does agentic grocery shopping work in Germany and the Netherlands?+
Yes. Pepesto covers Rewe in Germany and Albert Heijn, Jumbo, and Plus in the Netherlands — with Kaufland, Edeka, and Lidl in integration. Product data is returned in the local language (German for Rewe, Dutch for AH) alongside English equivalents via the knowledge graph. Pricing is in the correct local currency. Agents query Dutch and German chains using the same API call structure as UK or Swiss chains.

Build agentic grocery for Europe.
Start with Pepesto.

27 European chains. One API. One schema. Pay-as-you-go from €0.05 per request. API key returned in 5 minutes — no approval required.

Questions? orders@pepesto.com  ·  Book a call