I recently noticed that both the Giant and Weis Markets near me are starting to install automated checkout lanes. is this a common occurrence near you? I put this in the QZ since I assumed it was a result of COVID, but it might also just be lack of available help?
EDIT: I might need to clarify that I don’t mean self-checkout. I don’t know that anyone needed it, but I figured I would do so just in case.
Around here this was in full swing prior to COVID. I have a dozen grocery stores within 5 minutes’ drive and can only think of one without automated checkout, both of which are pretty old and have limited space.
I don’t know what “automated checkout” is. I googled it and got a page describing self-checkout. Can anyone fight my ignorance on this?
I’ve been out of the industry for two decades, so this might have changed, but the method that was being tested back then was to have RFID tags on all items, then you push your cart through a gate that reads said RFID tags in bulk and sums up your purchases. The primary reason you didn’t see immediate widespread adoption was the need to get RFID tags on every item in the store. While you can probably get the cost per tag below a penny if done in enough bulk, you still needed someone to apply them, unless all manufacturers got on board and embedded them at production time.
Back then, a few states required every item in the store to be individually priced, not just have a shelf sticker with the price like most of you are used to. Those were the states where it almost made sense at the time, as the labor for tag application was already part of the cost.
What I’m thinking of is basically a reversed version of a current checkout-you put your stuff on a conveyor and swipe it, then pay and bag it. No grocery store employee needed except for a floater for technical issues.
I’m also not sure what “automated checkout” is supposed to mean. We have (like everyone) the Unexpected-Item-In-Bagging-Area self checkouts but nothing I’d call “automated” – just me doing someone else’s job. I know they have the Amazon stores where it tallies everything and takes it from your account via techno-magic but that hasn’t spread to major grocers here that I’ve seen.
Not so much in Canada, since conversion was already under way before the pandemic hit. But I’m seeing a lot of changes in Moscow after having been away for almost two years. Even the little superette next to my apartment building now has mostly automated check-out counters.
We’re about to get an Amazon Fresh where if I understand correctly, your cart pretty much tallies as you shop and then you just pay at a card machine before leaving. This would let you also bag as you go.
Not sure how produce that has a cost per pound will work. The store isn’t open yet.
The Stop N Shops near us have some system like this in place where you scan the items as you go. I’ve never tried them though.
I did some digging and it appears that Giant is implementing self-scanning, which is quite a bit more burdensome than the future we envisioned with RFID tags, as it requires the shopper to scan every item as they put it into their cart, as opposed to scanning them at checkout. Not really much of a timer saver. I’m also guessing that the special checkout lanes will have scales to weigh your cart, to ensure there is nothing in there that wasn’t scanned, as grocery stores and honor systems aren’t traditionally bosom buddies. It is much cheaper to implement, as it requires no changes to each item.
With the RFID system, it would look more like this, although we also looked at shopping carts with built-in bag hanging systems, so you could bag as you shop. The final piece of the puzzle, as people get really pissed if the shelf sticker has one price and the scanned item has another, was to install wireless price displays (LCD back in the day, but more like this now) which would be driven directly from the POS servers and would therefore always be accurate.
Once done, it would work something like this, although this doesn’t show the groceries bagged.
If it is anything like Amazon Go (and I think it is) then you don’t even pay before you go. You scan in at the beginning and anything you have been detected to have picked up and kept is charged to you after you leave.
Wegmans Scan seems to be closest local service to the OP. You can scan items as you put them into the cart, but then go to the self-checkout area to pay. The machine scans the phone for a total and then you can pay by card or cash in the usual way.
At the Sam’s I go to it has:
Scan each item with your phone
Put the item in the cart
When finished pay with the phone
It gives a QR code (is that the right term) on your phone.
As you walk out the door you show the phone to the person at the door. They read the code with a scanner thing…
You leave.
Has any store that has gone the automation route actually then lowered its prices?
Amazon is saying they can be lower because of the automation. They will be cheaper than Whole Foods (which they own) if that counts.
I do self-scan at my grocery store and I L-O-V-E it! It was installed a few months before Covid and I didn’t use it then but I’ve been using it exclusively since March 2020. I scan & bag my groceries as I shop, and it takes 2 minutes to check out (provided there is no line at the machine, which there never is).
Except last time I went to the store the system was down. I had to use a “traditional checkout” with a cashier and everything and to be honest I was flummoxed.
RFID would be pretty cool. I bet the loss/theft cost of Self Scan versus RFID would make up for the cost of RFID.
I used to work in a store that still did on-item price tags (as almost every store was at one point), so it’s not out of the realm of possibilities to get everything quickly tagged. But it looks like RFID tags are still kind of bulky, size-wise. How much room do you have on a small can of lima beans to put a tag without covering up the brand or the nutritional info?
Including them in the manufacturing process tho, that’d be awesome.
Eliminating jobs, one store at a time.
LOL !
Nice one !
None of the supermarkets where I shop (suburban Chicago) have any sort of automated shopping/check-out yet.
Eliminating employees but not lowering prices. The bottom line is always money, making money.
Eliminating the lower paid jobs, one store at the time. In Belgium and France Carrefour and Delhaize have been eliminating the cashier jobs as fast as they can force the customers to do the job themselves since before the pandemic. I have so far refused.
Germany is more reluctant, Germans usually are wary of technology that stores their data (except when Facebook does it, strangely enough). They are the Europeans that least use credit cards, for instance.
And no, neither Carrefour nor Delhaize have lowered their prices that I have noticed.