Hy-Vee is a leading employee-owned supermarket chain headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa, operating more than 285 stores across eight Midwestern states. Founded in 1930, Hy-Vee has built its reputation on a commitment to “a helpful smile in every aisle,” offering a full range of groceries alongside pharmacy, health, and wellness services. Known for its innovative approach to retail, Hy-Vee combines traditional in-store experiences with robust e-commerce, meal solutions, and community engagement initiatives. With over 90,000 employees, Hy-Vee remains dedicated to providing exceptional customer service, high-quality products, and a forward-thinking shopping experience that meets the evolving needs of its customers.
Their latest solution for shoppers? In-store kiosks to search for products, view product information, browse the weekly ad, and update their shopping list in their mobile app.
Hy-Vee turned to Shockoe to create a kiosk that can help customers navigate the store and find what they need quickly. The Hy-Vee kiosk allows customers to search for a product, find available options along with pricing information, and see which aisle it’s on. From there, shoppers can use the store map available in the kiosk to navigate to the product’s location.
01
APPROACH
Starting with thorough discovery, Shockoe and Hy-Vee worked closely to define, design, develop, and measure performance for this innovative grocery solution.
STEP 1
Define business goals, customer needs, and digital execution plans
STEP 2
Creating intuitive, on-brand solutions, focusing on quality and scalability
STEP 3
Supporting launch and maintenance across devices and platforms
STEP 4
Analyzing performance to optimize and enhance your digital solutions
02
IMPACT
Establishing a scalable platform that allows for feature expansion.
Hy-Vee aimed to deliver a modern, convenient, and engaging shopping experience for customers. However, store density created a common frustration: while staple grocery items were easy to locate, less common products like molasses or toothpicks could take significant time to find. Unlike online shopping—where a search bar delivers results instantly—brick-and-mortar customers had limited, often inefficient ways to locate products. Hy-Vee needed a fast, intuitive, and self-service digital solution to help shoppers locate items without friction, while also integrating with their broader mobile and digital ecosystem.
Following discovery, the recommendation was an in-store information kiosk that could act as a real-time “item finder” and digital engagement touchpoint.
Using the Kiosk, customers can search for a product by text, voice-to-text, or product barcode, integrating with third-party scanning hardware for fast product look-up—reducing time-to-item and improving the shopper experience
Within Product Details, customers can view a product image, price, aisle location, availability, ingredients, and nutritional details.
Through integration with Flipp, customers have access to embedded weekly ads, with the ability to tap for detailed offers.
Increased Store Engagement: Attractive design and helpful features encourage interaction, particularly for hard-to-find products.
Actionable Insights: Analytics provide Hy-Vee with valuable data on search patterns, popular products, and customer needs, informing inventory and merchandising strategies.
Brand Perception Boost: Reinforces Hy-Vee’s position as an innovative, customer-first retailer, especially in flagship digital-first store locations.
At Shockoe, apps are normally available for users to download on their devices, so metrics focus on acquisition and retention. But with the Hy-Vee kiosk app running on a public device, measurement was focused on usage with sessions (not users) and tracked engagement based on successful searches. Session tracking and search success rates were tracked through integrations between Google Firebase, Google Analytics 360, and Data Studio. Shockoe also evaluated customer satisfaction with the kiosk by prompting an in-app survey that asked if and how the kiosk was helpful for them.
03
EXPERIENCE
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