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  • Walmart filed a patent for an online grocery shopping service that functions like the dating app Tinder.
  • The service would allow shoppers to accept or reject produce picked by Walmart employees.
  • It could solve one of customers’ biggest gripes about online grocery shopping: that they don’t get to select their produce and could therefore end up with bruised or discolored items.

 

Walmart has filed a patent for an online grocery shopping service that functions like the dating app Tinder.

The service would allow shoppers to accept or reject produce picked by Walmart employees, much like Tinder allows users to accept or reject potential dates.

Here’s how it works:

Shoppers would order groceries for delivery or pickup through Walmart’s website.

As a Walmart employee packed the order, they would send shoppers three-dimensional images of the produce they had selected.

Shoppers would get a notification to accept or reject the selected produce, based on the images.

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If they accepted the selections, those items would be added to the customers’ shopping cart.

If they rejected one of the images, however, then the Walmart employee would swap that piece of produce out for another selection, and send the customer a photo of the new item for their approval.

There would be a limit on how many times customers could reject a specific item. When that limit was reached, customers would be able to make a selection from all the images that were sent to them.

CB Insights was the first to report on the patent filing.

The system could solve one of customers’ biggest gripes about online grocery shopping: that they don’t get to select their produce and could therefore end up with bruised or discolored items that they wouldn’t have chosen had they visited the store.