Anycart, based in Palo Alto, has been operating in beta mode for about nine months and has agreements with Amazon’s Whole Foods Market chain and certain Albertsons Cos. banners. The company aligns those retailer’s inventories in local stores to an e-commerce site built around recipes, allowing shoppers to buy all the ingredients needed for a dish in a single click, with prices viewable on a per-plate basis. Shoppers may also use Anycart to shop by item as a traditional e-commerce site would. Shoppers choose their local store before they shop in the style of a marketplace. The orders are fulfilled and delivered by the retailers as though they came in directly from consumers. After they shop, consumers can use Anycart again to prepare the items they shopped for with step-by-step video recipes. The result is something of a combination of a meal-kit provider with an online shopping concierge, only Anycart handles no inventory and leaves order picking and fulfillment to its partner retailers.
