TL;DR

A Morrisons store in Ashton-on-Ribble, on the western edge of Preston, has become the first UK supermarket to trial Caper trolleys — Instacart hardware that recognises each item as it goes in, keeps a running total and suggests related products, letting shoppers pay at the trolley rather than at a till.

Why this attempt might land where the last one did not

The obvious comparison is Amazon Fresh, whose camera-driven walk-out stores never took hold here; the final British site shut in 2025. The Dash Cart those stores used is close kin to the Caper trolley and still operates in Amazon’s other markets.

The difference is where the technology sits. Fresh required rebuilding the shop around the system. A trolley slots into a supermarket that already exists, so the retailer risks a fleet of trolleys rather than a store estate, and the shopper opts in one trip at a time. The units are already running in more than a hundred cities internationally, and Morrisons has said it wants them in stores nationally.

What shoppers actually said

The reporting is more useful than the announcement, because the Guardian asked people using them. Matthew Byrne, who is autistic, said the running total helped substantially: he tends to put things in the trolley without tracking the cost, and seeing it accumulate meant he held to an £80 budget. That is an assistive benefit, not a convenience one.

Kaz Bond, four weeks into using them for every shop, called them brilliant and expects them everywhere before long. Debbie Files was less convinced — confusing at first though quick to learn, but heavy enough that she struggled to steer it and said she would return only if a smaller version appeared.

Looking forward

That last complaint is the one to watch. Also today, Resultsense reported a stroke patient locked out of her GP surgery by an AI phone system that has since been withdrawn. The pattern repeats: a technology that genuinely helps some people can exclude others through something as mundane as weight or handling, and a single trolley design serves a narrow band of shoppers. If Morrisons scales this nationally, the size range will matter as much as the recognition accuracy.