CartQuest

Home Page
Challenges
Completing the Challenge
Leaderboard
Checkout

Inspiration

Grocery delivery apps have made shopping faster — but also less human. Wakefern’s family of stores — from ShopRite to The Fresh Grocer — all face the same challenge: how to bring people back into the aisles and make in-store shopping exciting again. Our team wanted to reimagine grocery trips as something people look forward to, not just complete out of necessity. That idea sparked CartQuest — a gamified, challenge-based shopping experience that rewards curiosity, discovery, and local products. We were inspired by the energy of mobile games and loyalty apps, and wanted to merge both into a single, seamless experience that lives inside Wakefern’s retail ecosystem.

What it does

CartQuest transforms grocery shopping into a personalized, game-like experience for customers across the Wakefern network — including ShopRite, The Fresh Grocer, Price Rite, and other partner stores. Here’s how it works: 🧾 Receive personalized challenges based on your past purchases and shopping habits — like “Find 2 new local brands” or “Build a healthy breakfast under $10.” 🛒 Scan items as you shop to earn points and unlock instant digital rewards. ⚡ Bonus items appear as 2× point promos, encouraging discovery of featured products. ⏱️ Skipping an item deducts potential points, adding a light strategy to each run. 🎉 Completing a challenge triggers confetti animations, live point updates, and leaderboard movement.

💳 When finished, shoppers generate a checkout barcode which they can use at self-checkout and completing the purchase awards points to the account. By combining data-driven personalization with fun, in-store gameplay, CartQuest helps Wakefern grocers drive foot traffic, product discovery, and customer loyalty — turning every shopping trip into an adventure.

How we built it

We built CartQuest by combining AI personalization, data intelligence, and cloud infrastructure to gamify in-store shopping across Wakefern’s brands. The backend, built with FastAPI, powers challenge generation, scoring logic, and user sessions. Snowflake serves as our data warehouse, where an AI algorithm analyzes each shopper’s past purchases, in-store promotions, and featured products to create personalized, curated challenges. The Next.js frontend delivers a dynamic, game-like interface with real-time scoring and reward updates, all deployed securely on Vercel and Google Cloud for scalability and performance. Together, these technologies make every grocery trip interactive, adaptive, and rewarding.

Challenges we ran into

Setting up the entire personalization system proved to be our biggest challenge. Integrating AI models, Snowflake data pipelines, and receipt parsing via Typescript required complex coordination across multiple APIs and data formats.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of building a fully functional prototype that merges AI personalization, data intelligence, and gamified design into one seamless experience. Successfully integrating Snowflake, FastAPI, and Next.js in a short timeframe was a major win, especially with real-time scoring and adaptive challenge generation working smoothly. We’re also proud that CartQuest doesn’t just look good — it solves a real business problem by helping Wakefern grocers bring customers back into stores through engaging, personalized experiences.

What we learned

We learned how powerful data-driven personalization can be when combined with gamified design. Working with Snowflake taught us how to manage and analyze retail data efficiently, while FastAPI helped us structure scalable backend logic. We also learned the importance of seamless UX — even the smallest animation or point update can dramatically impact user engagement. Most importantly, we discovered how to turn a familiar, everyday experience like grocery shopping into something playful, meaningful, and data-smart.

What's next for CartQuest

🧠 Smarter AI: Expand our AI model to factor in seasonal trends, local events, and dietary preferences for even more relevant challenges. 🤳 Live Scanning: Add camera-based barcode scanning for instant item recognition. 🏆 Community Challenges: Introduce team-based and family competitions to boost in-store engagement. 📊 Analytics Dashboard: Build a Snowflake-powered insights tool for retailers to track participation, engagement, and item lift.