Coca-Cola and AB InBev Are Quietly Turning Store Shelves Into AI Data

I was in New York City, shopping at a store in a mall, and there was this guy just standing in the aisle, literally taking pictures of the shelves.

So I walked up and asked him what he was doing. He told me he was a merchandiser, and that he worked for a local distributor. And that's what they do now, he said. They use AI to literally scan the shelves.

I saw the logo on his notebook. It said Manhattan Beer.

So I googled it. Manhattan Beer Distributors, founded in the Bronx in 1978, is one of the biggest beverage distributors in the country, moving more than 45 million cases a year. It carries Corona, Modelo, Heineken, Coors Light and Miller Lite, among a long list of brands.

Then I tried to figure out what software they're using. Turns out it's a system called AI Merch, a startup Anna Vladymyrska founded in 2023, and it lists Manhattan Beer as its customer. The rep snaps the shelf and the AI reads it, what's there, what's missing, the prices, the facings. So instead of mapping the roads, they map the stores.

AI Merch's promo film describes the old way from a rep's point of view: "I would walk the aisle, open the cooler, count facings, check prices, look for missing SKUs, take pictures, make notes."

To be fair, the Manhattan Beer relationship is AI Merch's claim. I couldn't find the distributor saying anything about it publicly, and Manhattan Beer also appears in a case study from a rival app, GoSpotCheck.

It's Not Just One Startup

And once you start looking, you see it everywhere.

Trax and FORM. In February, private equity firm Gemspring Capital combined FORM, GoSpotCheck's parent, with Trax's image-recognition business. The release says 30 of the top 50 CPG companies use Trax. Named customers include Coca-Cola and AB InBev, per its history.

Repsly and ParallelDots. Image recognition added to Repsly's field app in a September 2025 partnership. Customers named: Kraft Heinz, AB InBev, Revlon.

Storesight. Skips the rep entirely. It uses shopper-submitted shelf photos, and its February launch claimed coverage of 80% of all-commodity volume, 480 categories, 5,000 brands.

Zebra Technologies. A January release added AI agents for shelf merchandising, and named Lowe's, Office Depot and Total Wine as customers.

Simbe Robotics. Robots instead of phones. It just passed 3,000 shelf-scanning robots under contract across 75+ retail banners. CEO Brad Bogolea: "Retail is one of the clearest proving grounds for physical AI at commercial scale, and this is just the beginning."

Why Brands Pay for It

Because empty shelves are expensive. IHL Group figures $1.77 trillion in global inventory distortion, and about $690.9 billion of that is just empty shelves. Or as Storesight CEO Ty Kasperbauer put it: "The data needed to win at the shelf is now non-negotiable."

Now, I'd take a lot of the numbers in this space with a grain of salt. The accuracy stats, the revenue lifts, most of it comes from the vendors themselves. And yes, a phone that counts facings is doing part of the rep's job. AI Merch's answer, in that same film: "The sales rep still sells. The manager still manages. The distributor still runs the business."

Where the Money Goes

AI Merch, Trax, Repsly, Storesight and Simbe are all private. Listed exposure:

• Sells the tools: Zebra (ZBRA)
• Buys the data: Coca-Cola (KO) , Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) , Kraft Heinz (KHC) .
• Retail: Lowe's (LOW) .

The Bottom Line

Honestly, the guy in the aisle didn't look like the future of AI. He looked like a guy with a phone and a notebook. But that's kind of the point. This is the future of AI, and it's quietly taking over the consumer space, one shelf at a time. Nobody walking past him had any idea.