Amazon announced today that its new Fresh grocery store opening this week in Bellevue, Washington will feature Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology. This is the first implementation of Amazon’s cashierless checkout technology in a full-sized grocery store.
The grand opening for the new Amazon Fresh is Thursday, June 17 at the Bellevue Factoria Mall. To use the new cashierless checkout technology, users scan their Amazon app or their palm (if they’ve signed up for Amazon One payment), or they insert a credit card into a turnstile upon entering. As customers shop, cameras and sensors automatically keep track of what they pick up. When it’s time to go, instead of standing in a checkout line shoppers scan their app, palm or insert their credit card into a turnstile to exit. The Just Walk Out technology tallies up the total and automatically sends the receipt.
Amazon kicked off the whole cashierless checkout movement with the launch of its first Amazon Go store back in January of 2018. Up until now, the technology has only been used in these smaller Go and Go Grocery store formats, and questions had hung over Amazon (and other players in the space) as to how big the system could scale, since most Amazon Go stores are 1,700 – 2,500 sq. feet. This new Fresh Market is 25,000 sq. feet — a significant leap for the technology. As the store size gets bigger, more cameras, sensors and computing power are needed to identify a huge number of SKUs while monitoring the actions of more shoppers.
The cashierless checkout space has been having a banner year in 2021. In the first part of the year, we saw startups emerge, funding news and partnerships formed. As we wrap up Q2, however, we are starting to see more news around larger-scale impelmention of cashierless checkout. Grabango, which has a deal with Giant Eagle, raised $39 million. Israel-based Trigo added German supermarket chain Rewe to its roster of clients. And now Amazon, which licenses out its Just Walk Out technology is in a full-sized store.
Part of the reason for all this activity in the cashierless checkout space is the pandemic, which had retailers looking for ways to reduce the amount of human-to-human interaction. Cashierless checkout reduces the number of staff interacting directly with other people, and keeps customers from congregating in checkout lines. Big supermarket chains, however, don’t move on a dime and need solutions that scale to thousands of stores immediately. We were probably already going to see a number of announcements from big retailers about cashierless checkout this year. But Amazon’s announcement today may accelerate those announcements as supermarkets look to keep Amazon at bay.
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