Australia's Coles Group has selected Coveo to power AI-driven search and product discovery on coles.com.au, the retailer announced October 21. The deployment targets one of online grocery's persistent friction points: helping shoppers navigate a large, constantly changing product catalogue quickly and with confidence.
What the Tech Does
Coveo's AI-Relevance platform synthesizes shopper intent, behavioral signals, contextual cues, and product data to deliver personalized search results and recommendations in real time. For a retailer with more than 1,800 outlets nationally and upward of 8,000 suppliers feeding its range, that kind of dynamic relevance engine matters — product assortments shift constantly, and a search experience that lags behind that change drives abandonment.
"We're always looking for ways to make shopping with Coles easier for our customers, and search is an important part of the online experience," said Ben Levinson, general manager of digital product at Coles. "Coveo demonstrated that its technology will make it easier for customers to find the products they are looking for."
Why Operators Should Watch This
The Coles-Coveo partnership reflects a broader acceleration in AI investment across grocery and foodservice e-commerce. As online basket sizes grow and competition for digital wallet share intensifies, the quality of search and discovery has become a measurable revenue lever — not just a UX nicety. Retailers and foodservice operators that surface the wrong product, or bury a high-margin item, leave money on the table with every session.
Coveo's approach — moving from broad persona targeting to individualized relevance — aligns with where restaurant technology coverage and grocery digital strategy are converging: consumers now expect the same frictionless discovery they get on general e-commerce platforms when they shop for food online. For operators building or refining their own digital ordering and delivery channels, the signal here is that off-the-shelf AI search infrastructure is increasingly available at scale, not just for the largest platforms.
Alexander Mahr, managing director for APAC at Coveo, framed the opportunity plainly: helping Australians find everyday grocery products faster represents a direct improvement to the digital shopping journey that Coles has been expanding alongside its physical store network.
The deal adds a major grocery chain to Coveo's (TSX: CVO) retail client roster and extends the Montreal-based company's footprint in the Asia-Pacific market. For beverage industry analysis and food retail observers tracking how AI is reshaping the path to purchase, Coles' scale — more than 115,000 employees and millions of weekly customers across store and digital platforms — makes this a meaningful proof-of-concept for enterprise-grade AI relevance in grocery.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
