Albertsons Cos. is expanding its work with OpenAI, a partnership the companies detailed in a post published October 1 that covers both internal tooling and customer-facing shopping. OpenAI says the arrangement includes ChatGPT Enterprise and custom AI-powered experiences built with the OpenAI API, alongside data-driven recommendations and promotional insights.
OpenAI’s post describes the Safeway experience in ChatGPT as letting shoppers start from a recipe, a photo, a digital list or a plain request — its examples include “Plan pizza night for four” and a prompt to restock breakfast foods using store brands — after which ChatGPT surfaces relevant products the shopper can add or remove. OpenAI frames the result as moving from a dinner idea to checkout inside ChatGPT.
Where that checkout actually happens is where the accounts diverge. Grocery Dive, which covered the plugin when Albertsons first announced it, reports that once shoppers finish browsing and adding items they are redirected to the Safeway e-commerce platform to complete the purchase — making ChatGPT a discovery and cart-building layer rather than the point of sale. The trade outlet also notes that users invoke the experience by typing @Safeway into ChatGPT ahead of a request such as reordering a weekly list or planning a quick pasta dinner.
Scale is the backdrop. OpenAI’s post says Albertsons runs more than 2,200 stores under banners including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, ACME and Tom Thumb, serving over 36 million customers each week.
The Safeway plugin is not Albertsons’ first OpenAI touchpoint. Grocery Dive points out that in February the grocer joined an OpenAI pilot to explore conversational advertising formats shown through ChatGPT. Both the trade outlet and Chain Store Age note that the new plugin builds on Albertsons’ own AI shopping assistant and its “Ask AI” search capabilities, which already let customers run natural, multi-turn conversations.
Chain Store Age frames the announcement in a wider context: Albertsons is deploying ChatGPT Enterprise internally and using OpenAI-backed applications for retail-technology teams and select business functions, an approach the grocer says lets it test what works in focused areas before scaling. The company plans to grow the ChatGPT experience beyond Safeway to other banners including Albertsons, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, ACME and Tom Thumb, Chain Store Age reports.
Albertsons’ Jill Pavlovich, senior vice president of digital customer experience, said in a statement that the ChatGPT plugin is a practical way the company is using AI to reduce friction in everyday shopping. OpenAI cites research from dunnhumby’s February 2026 U.S. Consumer Trends Tracker suggesting shoppers are more open to using AI for groceries than for other kinds of purchases — the rationale the companies offer for pushing AI into the weekly grocery run.
Several things remain unconfirmed. Neither company has detailed how the chat-driven experience handles pricing, substitutions or loyalty, which stores are covered at launch, or how the Safeway plugin will reconcile with Albertsons’ own assistant across banners. The two published accounts of where checkout happens have not been reconciled in public, and the practical scope of the rollout will only become clear once shoppers use it.