Maplebear Inc.

Benjamin Knight

Darren Johnson

Saumitra Maheshwari

Djordje Gluhovic

Sharath Rao Karikurve

Camille Van Horne

Maksim Golivkin

Christopher Billman

Mingzhe Zhuang

Riddhima Sejpal

Kenneth Jason Sanchez

Tomasz Debicki

Chris Jenkins

Valery Vaskabovich

Do Quang Phuoc Dang

Salmaan Ayaz

Christopher Rudnick

Benjamin Peyrot

Qi Xi

Conor Woods

Viktoriya Andonova

Victoriya Andonova

Daniel Haugh

Rohit Turumella

Samuel K Sherman

Daniely Zoller Cruz

Rebecca Younis

Jennie Braunstein

Alice Han

An online system receives orders from users and dispatches pickers to fulfill the orders by obtaining ordered items at a retailer. If an ordered item cannot be found by a picker, the picker may refund the item or attempt to find a replacement item. While obtaining a replacement item may increase revenue to the online system, it can also cause a bad outcome for user experience (e.g., an unacceptable replacement item, a refund request of the replacement item, etc.). To balance these interests, the online system trains a model to predict an outcome metric comprising a likelihood of a bad outcome from replacing an item or an expected amount of profit to the online system from a replacement item. The online system compares the outcome metric to a threshold to determine whether to promote or dissuade the picker from replacing a not-found item.

Replacing an unavailable item in an order using a trained outcome prediction model

An online system receives a request to access an interactive geographical map of sources from a client device associated with a user. The system retrieves data describing a geographical location associated with the user. The system identifies one or more sources within a threshold distance of the location and retrieves data including information describing items available at each source. For each source, the system accesses and applies a machine-learning model to predict a user engagement score indicating a likelihood of one or more interactions by the user with a set of items available at the source if the source is included in the map. Based on the score for each source, the system selects a set of sources and generates the map, in which the map indicates the geographical location of each selected source. The map is then sent to the client device, causing the device to display the map.

Displaying an interactive geographical map of sources

Based on orders fulfilled by shoppers of an online concierge system, the online concierge system identifies items in an order that are difficult to find in a warehouse in which the order is fulfilled. When a shopper obtains a difficult to find item from the warehouse, the online concierge system prompts the shopper to provide information for finding the difficult to find item in the warehouse. The online concierge system stores the information for finding the difficult to find item from the shopper in association with the difficult to find item and with the warehouse. Subsequently, when a different shopper is fulfilling an order from the warehouse including the difficult to find item, the online concierge system displays the information for finding the difficult to find item in the warehouse to the different shopper.

Providing information for locating an item within a warehouse from a shopper to other shoppers retrieving the item from the warehouse

An online concierge system performs asynchronous automated correction handling of incorrectly sorted items using point-of-sale data. The online concierge system receives orders from customer client devices and determines a batched order based on the received orders. The online concierge system sends the batched order to a shopper client device for fulfillment. The online concierge system receives transaction data associated with the batched order from a third party system. The online concierge system determines whether a sorting error occurred based on the transaction data and the batched order. In response to determining that a sorting error occurred, the online concierge system sends an instruction to correct the sorting error to the shopper client device.

Asynchronous automated correction handling in concierge system of incorrectly sorted items using point-of-sale data

An online concierge system requests an image of a receipt of an order from a picker after the picker fulfills the order at a store. The online concierge system performs image processing on the image of the receipt and uses machine learning and optical character recognition to determine a tax amount paid for the order and a confidence score associated with the tax amount. The online concierge system may use the machine learning model for segmenting extracted text in the image of the receipt into tokens. The online concierge system may then determine at least one token associated with a tax item and the tax amount associated with the tax item. The online concierge system communicates the tax amount to the store for reimbursement based on the tax amount and the confidence score.

Optical scanning using receipt imagery for automated tax reconciliation

An online concierge system receives information from a warehouse including locations of items within the warehouse. When a shopper selects an order for fulfillment from the warehouse, the online concierge system sorts the items for the shopper to minimize the time spent in the warehouse using the received information. When the online concierge system does not receive a location of an item within the warehouse, the online concierge system obtains a taxonomy for the warehouse including multiple levels, with each level having a different level of specificity. The online concierge system determines a higher level in the taxonomy for the item and identifies other items offered by the warehouse having the determined category. The online concierge system infers a location of the item within the warehouse used for sorting items of the order from locations of the other items within the warehouse and times when shoppers retrieved the other items.

Inferring a location of an item within a warehouse from a taxonomy of items offered by the warehouse and locations of other items within the warehouse

Growing community of inventors

Oakland, CA, United States of America

Benjamin Knight