Hopy: The Virtual Expert Advisor for Quebec Craft Breweries
A proprietary AI model trained on the entire Quebec craft beer ecosystem, deployed across IGA, Sobeys, Metro stores and convenience stores — available in seconds via a single QR code scan.
01. The Challenge
"How do you digitize the expertise of a real craft beer sommelier and make it available to thousands of Quebec consumers, right in the grocery aisle? Hopy needed to centralize data from hundreds of craft breweries — Dieu du Ciel, Boréale, Unibroue, Brasserie Dunham, Trou du Diable, Pit Caribou, Hopfenstark, Brasseurs du Monde — and turn that brewing knowledge into ultra-personalized recommendations in seconds, with no app to download."
02. Our Solution
We architected a complete ecosystem across three strategic pillars. First pillar — Intelligence: a custom web scraping engine that crawled the entire Quebec brewing web to collect every available craft beer, followed by training a proprietary AI model that became a genuine expert in craft beer profiles. Second pillar — the Admin Platform: a comprehensive back-office enabling multi-store group management (IGA, Sobeys, Metro), beer inventory management with precise in-store location tracking per point of sale, and a dynamic beer wall updated continuously to reflect new arrivals. Third pillar — the Explore Section: an ultra-fast mobile Progressive Web App triggered by an in-store QR code — the consumer answers 3 targeted questions, an instant personalized beer profile is created, and the system recommends the best beers available in that exact store, complete with their precise aisle and shelf location.
Impactful Results
- Deployed across IGA, Sobeys, Metro networks and multiple convenience stores throughout Quebec
- Personalized beer profile generated in just 3 questions — zero-friction experience
- Real-time product localization at every point of sale: precise aisle and shelf
- Exhaustive database covering hundreds of breweries: Dieu du Ciel, Boréale, Unibroue, Brasserie Dunham, Trou du Diable, Pit Caribou and more
- Robust architecture built over 7 months, engineered for national-scale deployment