A young woman in a tan coat and red beanie looks at her smartphone while shopping in a supermarket bakery department

Agentic AI primed to fill baskets for Canadian grocers 

EY
EY Canada

Multidisciplinary professional services organization

4 minute read 18 5月 2026
Related topics
Consumer Products
Transforming retail

Agentic AI offers a compelling lift for retailers across Canada’s grocery sector. 

In Brief

  • Agentic AI is reshaping grocery retail, enabling autonomous shopping that boosts loyalty, unlocks revenue and closes the gap between intent and purchase.

Agentic AI — and agentic commerce specifically — offers a compelling lift for retailers across Canada’s grocery sector. That came through loud and clear at this year’s National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show. The real question is: how are grocers and other consumer goods organizations going to jump on this opportunity?

Agentic AI marks a fundamental departure from the traditional and generative AI models we’ve seen so far. It’s that distinction that makes agentic commerce so promising for the grocery sector. This class of AI agents can engage with surroundings, make decisions, and act independently based on the kind of programming and learned experiences it encounters. This “agenticness” sets it apart from other kinds of AI. For example, large language models (LLMs) can surface intelligence and demonstrate knowledge, but they’re limited in terms of executing real-world tasks.

Not agentic.

Agentic AI systems have both the cognitive capabilities and the means to interact with the world and influence their surroundings. From the grocer’s perspective, that could be huge. 

Related Services

Loyalty program data as the foundation for relevance among Canada’s grocers

 

Consumers now have abundant choice, unlimited by geographic boundaries. Online shopping has opened customers’ eyes to radical price transparency across not just products or categories, but stores. Unified commerce added new dynamics to that environment. For example, thoughtful unified commerce experiences offer grocery customers consistent experiences wherever and however they interact with a brand, whether online, in the app or in store.

 

Agentic commerce provides a way to build on that progress, shaking up the retail landscape once again, perhaps permanently. By empowering agents to act on behalf of Canadian consumers, agentic commerce will go beyond the typical capabilities of chatbots. Agentic commerce can give grocery shoppers the chance to find the best possible product for them, even if it lies buried dozens of pages deep in a search engine’s chasms. People will be able to compare across grocery stores instantly. All of this fosters brand loyalty and trust.

 

On the retailer side of the house, agentic commerce can open new revenue streams and competitive models, as profit pools shift from product margin and retail media to access, orchestration, and trust. Agentic commerce also holds the promise of levelling the playing field for smaller vendors through agent-driven discovery and cross-marketplace comparison, as agents surface niche products without a heavy spend.

 

Critically: brands can use agentic commerce to go beyond sponsored search results and access rich, first-party shopper data, direct shopper relationships, and sophisticated, closed-loop measurement. This makes them an invaluable tool for full-funnel brand marketing. Put those ideas in the context of grocery chains with massive amounts of collected and stored data, and possibilities abound — if you have the system and agentic commerce perspective to turn that data into insights, identify trends, and act accordingly.

 

AI-powered commerce is the next big opportunity for Canada’s grocers

 

We know AI-driven tools are already making a positive impact in the consumer goods space. Some 81% of consumers expect to deploy gen AI tools in shopping for at least one product category.1

 

Examples are starting to pop up around the world. In Italy, one foodtech startup recently completed a seed round for its latest innovation: an ML platform that provides daily recommendations for how grocers can manage procurement, sell-out pricing, assortment, and even staff scheduling.2 Current users report sales upticks of up to 2% and cost reductions up to 10%.

 

Closer to home, Canadian Grocer and Canadian Grocery Business Magazine show leaders in the grocery segment are teaming with leading-class tech companies to integrate generative AI within shopping experiences. A specific example shows customers who use one online giant’s bot while shopping are more than 60% more likely to make a purchase during that experience.3

 

The rise of agentic AI and nascent agentic commerce can close the gap between intent and purchase. Existing data is a gateway to that opportunity, giving grocery chains and other retailers so many ways to amplify this potential. Put simply, agentic commerce represents a veritable blank canvas for first-mover Canadian grocers to lead the way. Are you ready to dig in?


Summary

The rise of agentic AI signals a new era for grocery retail, where intelligent agents move beyond recommendations to execute tasks and influence outcomes. Built on strong data foundations, particularly loyalty programs, this model empowers both consumers and retailers with deeper insights and real-time decision-making. With proven impacts on conversion and cost efficiency, agentic commerce presents a significant opportunity for Canadian grocers to lead in AI-powered innovation.

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