Ottawa: In a first-of-its-kind move for Canadian retail, Loblaw Companies Limited has announced a landmark partnership with OpenAI to integrate its “PC Express” shopping service directly into ChatGPT. The collaboration aims to simplify the grocery experience by allowing customers to plan meals and shop for ingredients through a conversational AI interface.
Under this new system, users can interact with ChatGPT to generate menu ideas or recipes. The AI will then curate a list of necessary ingredients based on those ideas. By providing a postal code, the chatbot can check the availability of items at the nearest Loblaw-affiliated store—such as Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore, or No Frills—and allow users to add those products directly to their digital cart within the chat interface. For the final step, customers are seamlessly redirected to the PC Express app to securely complete their payment and finalize the order.
Lauren Steinberg, Chief Digital Officer at Loblaw, emphasized that the partnership is a response to how digital habits are evolving. “AI has become a new avenue for how people plan, search for information, and make decisions,” Steinberg said. She noted that Loblaw is the first major Canadian grocer to offer such an integrated service, joining global brands like Spotify and Canva that have already adopted similar AI-driven features.
In addition to the consumer-facing shopping tool, the partnership includes the deployment of “ChatGPT Enterprise” for Loblaw’s internal teams. This move is expected to boost productivity and innovation among corporate staff, while the company continues to use AI models to improve logistics, inventory accuracy, and store management through proprietary tools like “Robin,” their AI-powered assistant for store managers.
