A grocer uses Meta's Muse agent for weekly ads and staff schedules
An Iowa grocer photographs wholesaler catalog pages and his staff schedule and sends them to Meta's Muse agent. The ad now takes about 15 minutes instead of two hours, he says.
Tom Mulholland runs a family grocery in Malvern, Iowa, and works about 65 hours a week. Each week his wholesaler sends a catalog of featured items. He used to highlight the ones he wanted, then spend a couple of hours typing them into an ad. Now he photographs the highlighted pages and sends them to Meta's Muse agent. He does the same with the staff schedule he rewrites every two weeks for 10 or 11 people: he sends a photo, asks Muse to change the dates, then makes the final tweaks himself. He also photographs employee timecards so Muse adds up the hours for payroll, has it write some Facebook posts and post to Instagram, and gets reminders. He has connected it to QuickBooks but has not used that yet.
How it went
Mulholland says the weekly ad now takes about 15 minutes instead of a couple of hours. In Meta's launch announcement he said timecard adding cut "at least 15 minutes from payroll". He now posts to Instagram, which he says he never remembered to do. He hopes Muse can later help reconcile overnight sales reports. These are the owner's own reports, not measured results.
Worth knowing
The owner has close ties to Meta, was invited to test Muse before launch, and is quoted in Meta's announcement, so treat the time savings as self-reported. The article says he still reviews and adjusts the work, and that nothing publishes, sends or spends without approval. The QuickBooks link is untested. Basic use is free up to a limit; paid tiers cost $20 or $100 a month (roughly £15 or £75). Gartner's advice in the piece is to limit what an agent can reach and require human approval for sensitive actions.
Try it yourself
Paste into ChatGPT, Claude or another AI assistant and fill in the square brackets.
I run [type of shop]. Attached is a photo of my wholesaler's catalog with the items I highlighted for this week. Write a weekly ad for [Facebook / in-store flyer] listing each highlighted item with its price, in a friendly local tone, with our regular line "[tagline]" at the end. Then attach a photo of last week's staff schedule and change the dates to [new dates], keeping the same shifts. Show me both drafts and flag anything you could not read clearly. Do not post, send or share anything until I have checked and approved it.
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