‘I’m Bev!’ Booze bot at your service in the whiskey aisle
A couple of dozen shoppers streamed into a BevMo store in Oakland one evening this week looking for liquor — and walked right past the future.
On a shelf lined with bottles of booze, a sign introduces “The world’s first voice-powered whiskey selection,” and invites shoppers to “Talk whiskey to me.”
BevMo, the 167-store Concord spirits seller, introduced the new piece of tech at three Bay Area locations as part of a pilot program featuring a voice-powered “smart aisle” that seeks to help shoppers decide between Jim Beam and Jack Daniels.
BevMo appears to be the first chain of specialty grocery stores experimenting with such a feature. While industry analysts and researchers praised BevMo’s attempt at innovation, voice assistants Alexa and Siri might not make the leap from living rooms to store aisles anytime soon, they said.
“I will applaud BevMo for a good first try, but the use of voice tech in this situation is a mismatch,” said Brian Roemmele, an artificial intelligence and voice technology consultant who runs a website called Voice First Expert.
Retailers want to use the latest technologies to stay ahead of competitors, but getting consumers who are used to shopping in a particular way to adopt new tools can prove difficult.
In the case of BevMo’s “Bev,” created with a custom application on Amazon’s Alexa voice-service platform, results are mixed.
“For me, it’s not a big sales point. I kind of know already what I’m looking for,” said Peter Gorwin, an Oakland resident shopping with his wife, Jane, at the Jack London Square BevMo on Wednesday. Neither noticed Bev when
they walked in.
BevMo hopes the new tech will help it better understand consumer needs, supplement staff product knowledge and provide an interactive experience that might attract foot traffic.
“You have to keep it fresh when you’re fighting online pressures and when customers can invest their own time online in getting educated,” said Tamara Pattison, BevMo’s chief marketing and information officer.
Voice-assisted technology such as Amazon’s Echo device, Google Home and Apple’s Siri are used by 1 in 10 Americans, or approximately 34 million people and 17 million homes, according to a Reuters Institute report released last year. Many retailers are offering different types of interactive tech to reinvent the in-store experience.
But BevMo’s pilot puzzles Roemmele.
“It doesn’t have signage that’s inviting,” Roemmele said. “It doesn’t explain easily what it does, and most people will not interact with it.”
That was the case for 43-year-old banker Gokhan Guvenc, who picked up a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey from the smart aisle without doing any talking.
“I saw Alexa, and I automatically thought I could order this at home because I have Alexa at home,” he said. “The sign doesn’t stand out because it blends in with the colors, and I didn’t know you could speak to it in the store.”
BevMo’s talking shelf is a stand-alone display. Nearly 50 whiskey bottles sit atop five shelves with an Amazon Echo smart speaker programmed to offer recommendations. Shoppers start by saying “Hi, Alexa,” to which it replies, “Hi, I’m Bev.”
Once activated, Bev guides customers through questions about their whiskey preferences, such as type, taste profile and price. Three bottles, along with names and descriptions, then become illuminated on the shelf. Shoppers can ask about a specific bottle or brand.
Brian Kilcourse, managing partner at Retail Systems Research in Miami, says voice commerce, as its called, “makes good sense” with e-commerce. He said, “People tend to use these tools in their homes or on their phones.”
A recent report from Gartner, a marketing research and consulting firm, says companies must view voice technology as part of a broader digital commerce strategy.
Pattison says BevMo’s smart aisle is useful to customers who don’t have such technology at home. Plus, it supplements in-store staff, she said.
Using high-tech help to round out staffing didn’t surprise Kirthi Kalyanam, director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University.
“We’re seeing the highest levels of employment in this economy, and I wonder if BevMo is having trouble finding knowledgeable sales staff,” he said. He suggested a different type of in-store interactive technology might work better.
“People are not comfortable talking to shelves in public,” he said. “We have not reached a point in our society where talking to a shelf is seen as cool.”
BevMo hired the Mars Agency, a Michigan advertising firm, for the trial. The choice to start with whiskey instead of wine, beer or other liquor varieties provided a smaller batch to track. The companies declined to say what the pilot cost.
Voice-activated tech doesn’t appear to be a hot trend in the spirits space. Employees at Bay Area Total Wine & More and K&L Wine Merchants stores, for instance, said they don’t know of any similar plans.
Other retailers have introduced interactive tech without the voice aspect. The Sephora beauty store chain has tablets and devices in its aisles. Its voice-activation feature — launched in November using Google Home — is for online shopping at home.
Priscilla Tovar, a store manager at the Jack London Square BevMo, said she’s seen four or five customers interact with the shelf since its start in mid-January. BevMo and the Mars Agency declined to provide pilot results but said early signs were promising.
Ethan Goodman, Mars senior vice president of innovation, said customer interactions and sales from the shelf will be studied.
He offered results from a pilot project in New York City: After two months of the smart aisle, the shop saw a 20 percent increase in yearover-year sales. The store, Bottle Rocket Wine & Spirit, did not respond to requests for comment.
The 90-day trial, also taking place in San Jose and Santa Clara, ends in March. That’s when Bev will extend her stay with the whiskeys, move on to the wine and beer aisles — or walk out the door.