Pick n Pay’s new answer to Checkers Sixty60
Pick n Pay has unveiled a major update to its on-demand grocery delivery service, asap!, as the retailer seeks to take on the market leader, Checkers Sixty60.
This update brings Penny, an artificial intelligence (AI) powered, multi-modal “shopping assistant”, to the asap! platform. The update will launch to the public on Monday, 13 July 2026.
Penny can assist asap! users with building shopping baskets, answering questions, and helping with “smart shopping”. The feature is powered by Google’s Gemini large language model.
At an event in Rosebank on Thursday, 2 July, Pick n Pay unveiled this update to the asap! platform.
Hosted by Pick n Pay’s retail executive of omnichannel, Enrico Ferigolli, the event provided attendees with a pre-launch look at the Penny feature.
Ferigolli demoed Penny, showing how the chatbot can answer questions and provide product recommendations, without customers needing to search for themselves.
He showed how customers can ask Penny for meal recommendations, and she can build a shopping basket based on those suggestions.
For example, users can tell Penny they want to make pasta for dinner, and the assistant will provide a recipe and product suggestions for what they may need to cook the dish.
Users can also upload photos of products or shopping lists – either typed or handwritten – to request similar product recommendations or to ask whether an item or its alternatives are in stock.
Customers can make requests by speaking or typing, and Penny can recognise multiple languages, including African languages, with the demo showing a good response to a request in Zulu.
Calling it the “new era of on-demand shopping” in South Africa, Ferigolli said the retailer will aim to expand the feature’s capability over the coming years.
Currently, he said, the more customers use the feature, the better Penny will become at making personalised recommendations.
AI grocery battle heats up
This new asap! feature comes as South African retailers are increasingly looking to up their competitive advantage in the next frontier of the local grocery retail and e-commerce market – convenience.
As South African shoppers increasingly prioritise convenience and technology evolves, on-demand delivery services have become a must-have for retailers looking to compete.
The current market leader in this frontier is Shoprite with its Sixty60 offering, which has boomed over the past decade and secured a sizeable chunk of the market for South Africa’s largest retailer.
Shoprite also recently launched an AI-powered shopping assistant, named “Pixie”, on its Sixty60 platform.
Now, Pick n Pay is looking to up its convenience offering and take on Shoprite with Penny.
At the event, Pick n Pay said the Penny feature differentiates itself from Sixty60’s AI offering through its chat interface, which adds more value to the shopping experience.
“More than just a new feature, this marks a significant step towards a more personalised shopping experience, with the potential to reshape how customers discover, shop for, and manage their groceries,” the group said.
Pick n Pay explained that the way South Africans shop is changing rapidly, driven by evolving customer expectations, on-demand convenience, and the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence.
To meet this demand, Pick n Pay has been investing heavily in its asap! platform over the past year.
Ferigolli described 2025 as a “milestone year” for asap!, as this was the year Pick n Pay re-platformed and rebuilt the entire system.
This brought together the retailer’s grocery, Smart Shopper loyalty programme, and value-added services into one next-generation platform.
In March 2026, the retailer also introduced the option to order products from Pick n Pay Clothing on the asap! platform.
This year, Ferigolli said the company’s focus has been on how to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into the platform, which is what led to the development of the Penny feature.
Pick n Pay’s investment in asap! over the past year is bearing fruit, with its most recent results for the 2026 financial year showing that its Online segment grew turnover by 32.7% on a like-for-like basis.
The results also revealed that the group’s on-demand platforms, including asap! and PnP groceries on Mr D, were up 37.6% year-on-year.
Launch event
Penny on the asap! app
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