How is AI showing up in retail stores?

We’re entering a new phase of retail shopping, as AI steps into store aisles.

Brands are plugging AI anywhere they can to help employees more easily find and access information and cut down on the manual work baked into the in-store experience. More recently, brands like The Vitamin Shoppe and Tecovas have rolled out AI-powered touchscreens and apps, respectively, to make the in-store experience more productive.

In early 2026, The Vitamin Shoppe rolled out a namesake digital touchscreen called “Shoppe Advisor” in its Upper East Side store in New York City, dubbed an “innovation” center by the retailer. The supplement retailer used AI to build and code the new interactive screen, which gives consumers information about workouts, energy drinks, sleep, and other related wellness content, which was previously really hard to get to.

The AI dose: “We did not set out to say, ‘How can we use AI in our stores?,’” Andrew Laudato, COO of Vitamin Shoppe, said on a recent Shoptalk Spring panel. “What we said was, ‘How can we provide a better customer experience, bringing digital content into the hands of our stores and to our customers?’”

The idea behind Shoppe Advisor, Laudato said, was to build an interactive touchscreen that would bring Vitamin Shoppe’s wellness content to customers. When a customer goes on Shoppe Advisor, they can type in, for instance, “I’d like to sleep better,” “I want to build more muscle,” “I’m dealing with X issue,” or tap through prompts to learn more about functional health and wellness.

“The AI then searches every bit of our content, brings up relevant videos, products, and articles about this [topic]. It’s been a huge hit in our stores,” Laudato said. “I will say that, yes, customers are using it, but even more, our store employees, that we call health enthusiasts, are [using it when] interacting with customers.”

Ultimately, Laudato said the AI screen is working and the company plans to roll it out to other stores. It also plans to take the code and logic behind the advisor to iPads across its retail stores, giving employees direct access to the AI tool to better assist customers.

Boot scootin’: On the same Shoptalk panel, Tecovas CTO Kevin Harwood talked about how the Texas-based cowboy boot brand is using AI to help store associates with inventory management with an app called “Boot Runner.”

“We built it in 36 hours with AI, and this platform is now deployed into our stores and allows our associates to request size inventory from the stock room,” Harwood said. “In the past, Tecovas used a radio model for store associates to handle stock that’s sitting in the backrooms.”

“We put our entire inventory position into our associates’ hands, where they can make recommendations to the customer in the moment,” Harwood said. “They can stay present in that conversation with the customer. And if we don’t have a size they’re looking for, we can immediately recommend another product to them that we do have in stock and make that request.”

More is less: Retailers will continue to prioritize internal use cases for AI as they face shortages in staffing and need to be able to do more with less, Sky Canaves, eMarketer analyst for retail and e-commerce, told Retail Brew. However, consumer-facing tools will also become more mainstream.

“We’ve already seen that AI tools are being used to help associates do their jobs, but we also see more consumers bringing AI into stores through their smartphones,” Canaves said. “They’re taking pictures and asking questions of chatbots like ChatGPT or apps like Yuka to get product information, and that’s just another evolution of how consumers have been using their mobile phones in stores.”