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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cashierless Checkout

Grabango Raises $39M Series B Funding for Cashierless Checkout

Cashierless checkout startup Grabango announced today that it has raised a $39 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Commerce Ventures with participation from Founders Fund, Unilever Ventures, Honeywell Ventures, and WIND Ventures. This brings the total amount of funding raised by the company to $71.2 million.

Grabango retrofits stores with overhead cameras and artificial intelligence to automatically keep track of what customers take and put in their baskets. Users download the Grabango app and shop as they normally would, and when it comes time to checkout, users scan a QR code generated by the app at a Grabango checkout kiosk and get charged automatically.

Cashierless checkout is gaining a ton of momentum in 2021. Startups across the globe are emerging with their own takes on the cashierless checkout space. Grabango, Zippin and Amazon all retrofit stores with cameras to keep track of purchases, while companies like Caper and Veeve use smart shopping carts. In addition to new funding, deals between cashierless checkout companies and retailers are moving from private pilots to public announcements. AiFi is working with Wundermart, for example and Caper’s smart carts are being used by Kroger.

The COVID pandemic accelerated much of the interest in cashierless checkout as retailers are now looking for ways to reduce human-to-human interactions in stores. Cashierless checkout means that one cashier doesn’t become a vector of transmission among many different people, and the technology keeps people from congregating together in lines. This technology is still new however, so even though the pandemic is receding, implementation of these systems, especially by large retailers, will still take time to evaluate and roll out.

Grabango’s system is already in use by Giant Eagle’s GetGo market in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and earlier this year Grabango released some stats on how it was being used. Some findings from that internal survey include:

  • 50 percent of users were 45 or older
  • More than 80 percent of visits were repeat visits
  • Shoppers spent 1.3 seconds checking out during peak hours
  • Refund requests were less than 0.03 percent of total volume, indicating high revenue accuracy

In today’s press announcement, Grabango said that its new funding coincides with additional store deployments with current and new customers in 2021. The company said it has signed five retail partners, including a global top-10 grocer, and multi-store deployments are underway at several of them.

AiFi and Verizon Open up Cashierless Popup Store at the Indianapolis 500

Cashierless checkout startup AiFi announced today that it has partnered with Verizon to open up a cashierless convenience Indy Express Shop NanoStore at the Indianapolis 500 race this weekend. The store will allow ticket holders, staff, drivers, volunteers to buy packaged snacks, beverages and merchandise without needing to stand in a checkout line.

To enter and shop at the NanoStore, users need to download the Indy Express Shop app. Customers scan the app upon entrance and once inside, AiFi’s computer vision and AI trechnology keep track of what items are chosen. When customers exit the store, they are automatically charged for whatever they took.

Cashierless checkout is having a big year so far, and sporting venues could be one of the primary locations we see the technology roll out first. Cashierless checkout stores allow sports or concert attendees to quickly walk in, grab what they want and walk out without needing to stand in a line. This speed allows people to get back to their seat sooner and not miss as much of the action. In a post-pandemic world, this speed also means fewer people are congregating inside a store at any given moment, reducing human-to-human interaction and potential viral transmission.

Rival cashierless checkout startup Zippin has installed cashierless checkout stores at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California, and Mile High Stadium in Denver.

AiFi’s NanoStores are basically self-contained, standalone unattended retail experiences that can be set up almost anywhere. This means that not only can AiFi retrofit existing stores in stadiums (and elsewhere), it can also create cashierless stores for outdoor venues and events, like the one at the Indianapolis 500.

The Indianpolis 500 will happen on Sunday, May 30th, but AiFi’s store is open now during all the preliminary events leading up to the race.

Trigo Partners with German Grocer REWE for Cashierless Checkout Stores

Israel-based Trigo announced today that it has partnered with Germany’s second largest grocery chain, REWE, to create a cashierless checkout store in downtown Cologne, Germany.

Founded in 2018, Trigo is practically an elder statesman in the world of cashierless checkout. The company uses a combination of shelf sensors, cameras, computer vision and AI to creat a “grab and go” shopping experience. Customers scan a mobile app upon entering the store, take what they want and get charged automatically upon exit.

The partnership marks Trigo’s first expansion into Germany. The company already has arrangements with grocery retailer Shufersal in Israel and Tesco (which is also an investor in Trigo) in the U.K. Initially, the cashierless checkout experience at the Cologne REWE store will be for employees only. Cashierless checkout will expand to the wider public later this summer, and REWE will still have cashiers for those who want to pay the old fashioned way.

The entire cashireless checkout sector has seen a lot of activity since the start of the year, but Europe in particular has been a hotbed of news. Nomitri (also in Germany) came out of stealth. Portugal’s Sensei raised funding. Outisde players like Imagr established new headquarters in Amsterdam while Amazon opened up a cashierless Fresh market in London. And retailers like The Netherlands’ Wundermart partnered with AiFi to launch a thousand cashierless checkout stores.

I expect we’ll be seeing more announcements from big grocery store chains experimenting with cashierless checkout as the year unfolds. The pandemic has retailers re-thinking the in-person shopping experience and cashierless checkout brings a number of benefits on that front. Cashierless checkout reduces human-to-human interaction between store staff and shoppers. It also keeps shoppers from congregating in checkout lines and can shorten the amount of time they spend in the store altogether.

Autonomous checkout is a topic we’ll be covering at our upcoming ArticulATE virtual conference on May 18. Execs from both Zippin and Nomitri will be discussing the state of cashierless checkout, implementing such technology and what’s coming next. Don’t miss out, get your ticket today!