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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Retail Technology

Tech-Forward Convenience Store Chain Choice Market Closes its Doors

Choice Market, the Denver-based convenience store chain known for blending a focus on fresh and high-quality food with a tech-forward approach to retail, has closed permanently. CEO Mike Fogarty announced via Linkedin that the company will be closing its doors permanently after months of attempting to navigate a reorganization process.

“This is a tough post to write, but after several months of working through a potential reorganization, unfortunately, Choice is closing its doors for good.” Fogarty expressed gratitude to the company’s investors, employees, and partners, and emphasized that despite the challenges, Choice’s mission to innovate and provide convenient, high-quality food for its customers was something he remains proud of.

“I am hopeful that Choice made our industry think differently about what it means to push boundaries and innovate for the next generation who values quality, health, and convenience,” said Fogarty (who was a speaker at Smart Kitchen Summit 2019).

After launching in 2017, Choice Market gained nationwide attention for its tech-forward C-store model. The company differentiated itself by offering fresh, locally sourced food combined with advanced technology to provide a seamless shopping experience. At its peak, Choice operated five stores in the Denver area and began experimenting with automated, small-format Mini Marts, positioning itself as a leader in the urban convenience store trend.

However, like many retail businesses, Choice Market was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As sales plummeted during the lockdown period, the company struggled to bounce back. The pandemic was just the beginning of a string of difficulties that plagued the company. Rising inflation, skyrocketing costs of goods, and labor shortages compounded the financial strain, ultimately leading Choice to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this summer and finally close down this week.

While the company made efforts to cut costs, such as reducing its executive team and adopting new in-store technologies to boost margins, these measures weren’t enough to save the business. Earlier this year, C Store Dive reported an investor promised to inject $1.5 million into the business, but the deal fell through in April, leaving bankruptcy as the only option.

The AI-powered automated store concept, the first of which the company rolled out in October 2022, was the focus behind a Series A raise around the same time. But with this week’s closure, we won’t get to see a fuller rollout of the concept of the smaller format (400 sf) automates store concept,

Fogarty remains hopeful for the future. He hinted at new beginnings in his parting message, stating, “I plan to take all the learnings and apply [them] to a new chapter. Until then, I just want to express my gratitude and appreciation. Onward.”

Speedy Eats Readies First Unattended Drive-Thru Convenience Store Location for Summer Launch


Speedy Eats, a maker of unattended vending and retail technology, will debut its first location with a customer this summer. The company, which has been showcasing its unattended retail concept at its lab in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for the past year, will launch with an unnamed food operator in August, according to CEO Speed Bancroft.

As seen in the video below, the customer drives up to the unmanned retail store and scans a QR code to verify their purchase via the Speedy Eats app. Once the items are retrieved by the gantry robotic picker system, they are deposited on a small conveyor belt, which delivers them to the consumer’s pickup window.

Each Speedy Eats unattended convenience store holds up to 276 items, including both fresh food and shelf-stable items such as packaged drinks and chips. According to Bancroft, the company recommends no more than 30% of items be fresh, which translates to 76 items. While the initial systems will not have a built-in microwave oven, Bancroft says the company has patented a packaging system with a degassing valve that will enable them to offer ready-to-heat food items alongside ready-to-eat fresh items.

The company initially worked on developing an automated unattended drive-thru pizza restaurant but pivoted over the past year to build its unattended convenience store system. The company also has unattended vending machines currently in the field in the Baton Rouge market.

Introducing Speedy Eats - An Outdoors Unattended Retail Store.

Robomart Unveils Autonomous Retail Collective to Propel Self-Driving Shops

Robomart, a company building a platform for self-driving retail storefronts, has announced a new organization called the Autonomous Retail Collective, a group aimed at accelerating the development of self-driving shops.

The group is a mix of Robomart’s partners, including Whale Dynamic, specializing in autonomous driving systems; Avery Dennison, a supplier of RFID technology; Zeeba, which offers fleet management services; and PIX Moving, a manufacturer of custom autonomous vehicles.

Sure, the organization is self-serving for Robomart, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea. The very concept of autonomous retail storefronts is still nascent, and Robomart has been pretty much the only company banging the drum for this concept since they debuted at CES in 2019. While the company has slowly been announcing partners over the past couple of years, including its recent announcement with PIX Moving (a company building the Robomart second-generation – and first autonomous – retail storefront), something akin to an industry alliance like this collective turns what is a loose grouping of companies into a turnkey solution for companies looking to expand into autonomous retail.

“ARC members are our suppliers and infrastructure partners that are committing to the development and advancement of self-driving shops,” Robomart founder Ali Ahmed told The Spoon. “Instead of just one startup building the category, we established the collective to demonstrate the entire ecosystem of players building around this new retail channel.”

For its part, Robomart plans to roll out its PIX-powered vehicles starting in 2025. The company plans to integrate the new autonomous platforms with the current Robomart fleets, which are retrofitted sprinter vans manned by a driver.

Amazon Details Usage of Generative AI-Created Synthetic Data to Train Just Walk Out Technology

For a while now, we’ve known the basic gist of how Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology works: A combination of computer vision, machine learning, and other sensor data helps enable a friction-free shopping experience in which customers pick items off the shelf and walk out the door without ever having to stop at a cash register.

But in a recent blog post by Amazon’s retail technology team, the company explained how it all worked in greater detail than we’ve seen in the past, including how the company has been using generative AI to train its Just Walk Out platform for long-tail cases that are rare but entirely possible in the unpredictable environment of retail.

According to Gérard Medioni, vice president and distinguished scientist at Amazon, the company uses a generative AI called a generative adversarial network (GAN) to create synthetic data for training Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology. The Just Walk Out team used datasets from millions of AI-generated synthetic images and video clips mimicking realistic, and sometimes rare, shopping scenarios, including variations in lighting, store layouts, and crowd sizes. According to Amazon, this training using generative AI-created synthetic visual data enables Just Walk Out to recognize and properly interpret millions of customer actions.

“When the customer exits, having an accurate account of their purchases is critical,” Medioni said.

The company also went into detail about how Just Walk Out and its Amazon One palm-based bioauthentication technology does – and don’t – work together. According to Amazon, the two systems operate independently of each other, keeping a person’s biometric information associated with their payment separate from Just Walk Out. When a shopper enters the store, the Just Walk Out system assigns the shopper a temporary numeric code, which serves as their unique digital signature for that shopping trip. When a shopper exits, the code disappears. When they come back, they get a new code.

Medioni says that Just Walk Out associates a person’s “pixels” to the one-time payment code assigned for that trip and the products they pick up off the shelf.

“Just Walk Out tech doesn’t collect any biometrics. All we need to know is where that person is on the floor, and where their hands are in relation to the store’s merchandise.”

According to Medioni, the system is sophisticated enough to track groups of shoppers assigned to a single payment instrument, and the system can create a single receipt for a group shopping trip.

“We had a tour bus that came in one day, and they had 90 people all paying with a single credit card,” Medioni adds. “Even if people leave the store separately and we can still keep track of the group’s purchases.”

While Amazon has shown mixed signals regarding its retail footprint, the company appears to remain interested in developing its technology platform for usage by other retailers. My guess is they’ll likely see some smaller retailers and non-grocers (like stadiums/sports venues) adopt the technology, but larger grocers will remain reticent to jump on board with technology developed by a competitor.

If you’re interested in how generative AI will change food retail, join us at the Spoon’s Food AI Summit on October 25th in Alameda!

Forget Getting Carded. Amazon Wants to Scan Your Palm To Make Sure You’re Of Age

Attention all baby-faced twenty-somethings who regularly get carded buying drinks: You may soon face a new high-tech twist on the age-old right of passage in the form of palm-scanning.

At least, that’s if Amazon has its way. According to the company, they’ve just added age verification to their Amazon One palm bio-authentication platform. According to a blog post about the new capability, customers enrolled in Amazon One can use age verification by uploading a photo of the front and back of their government-issued ID, such as their driver’s license, and a selfie. Once signed up, customers will no longer have to show ID when buying drinks at participating outlets.

When in a store or drinking establishment, customers can show they are of age by hovering their palm over an Amazon One device. A “21+” message and the customer-uploaded selfie will appear on the screen. From there, the bartender confirms the photo on their screen is the same as the customer’s and proceeds with the sale.

Bars and their customers might see the benefit of using Amazon’s tech-forward solution, especially if it can mean shorter lines. Bars might also save employee resources otherwise dedicated to carding customers. That said, I’m not sure your local watering hole is ready to install a palm scanner just yet.

While some may also be leery of putting too much of their personal data into the hands of big corporate tech, my guess is digital natives who are ok with sharing info online might prefer the convenience of using bio-authentication methods like palm print authentication. Amazon is also quick to point out that they don’t store users’ driver’s licenses in their system, and the IDs are verified by an ISO 27001–certified identity verification provider (ISO 27001 is an international standard for information security). However, they do store a copy of your palm information, which may still be too much for privacy-concerned customers freaked out about bio-authentication.

For those who are interested in getting palmed, you can check it out next time you catch a Rockies game, as Amazon has installed the age verification-enabled Amazon One In Coors Field at the SandLot Brewery and the Silver Bullet Bar.

Scoop: Starbucks Trialing Amazon’s Palm Payment System in the Seattle Market

Starbucks is trialing Amazon’s biometric payment system, Amazon One, in the Seattle market. The system, which allows customers to pay in-store with the scan of a palm, was spotted in a Starbucks north of the company’s Seattle headquarters in Edmonds, Washington.

To sign up to use the system, users can pre-enroll at the Amazon One website or inside Starbucks at the Amazon One kiosk. Since I didn’t already have an Amazon One account, I decided to sign up in the coffee shop. The kiosk prompted me to scan the barcode within the Starbucks app on my phone to identify my Starbucks account and recognize my form of payment. From there, it asked me to hover both my left and right palms above the scanner, one after the other. Once each palm was scanned, I was ready to go. It had taken all of about two minutes to sign up.

Since I was already there, I figured I’d try it out. I got in line and asked the barista for an iced tea. When asked for payment, I hovered my palm above the scanner until it recognized it, and that was that.

Paying for a coffee with my palm at Starbucks

While Starbucks has trialed Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology in the past with Starbucks/Just Walk Out combination concept stores in the New York City market, we were told this is the first time Amazon One has been trialed in an existing Starbucks location.

When I asked a barista if many folks had signed up to use the technology, he shook his head.

“Not yet. Some people were kinda creeped out by it.”

And that’s before they even read the small print. When I checked out the terms of service (which you can find on the Amazon One website during signup), the small print told me the system would store my palm signature, including on servers that may be outside of my country:

 The Service streams data to the cloud when you interact with an Amazon One device and stores your palm signature to authenticate you and provide, personalize, and improve the Service. This information may be stored on servers outside the country in which you live.

While using biometric data doesn’t both me that much, I know some do not like the idea. The small print tells Amazon One users they can delete their account whenever they want by deleting their Amazon One ID, which can be done within the app or through this website. The small print also says the system will automatically delete a user’s palm signature if they have not interacted with an Amazon One device in two years.

It won’t be a surprise if this is a sign that there will soon be an Amazon One palm-pay system at other Starbucks. Both Starbucks and Amazon often trial new technologies in the Seattle market, so there’s a good chance they are seeing how this goes before rolling it out to more stores nationwide.

Standard AI Bridges Gap Between Autonomous & Self-Checkout With Acquisition of Skip

San Francisco-based company Standard AI has announced the acquisition of self-checkout solution provider Skip. The deal will combine Standard AI’s autonomous retail platform with Skip’s self-checkout technology, which they say will allow retailers to resolve labor challenges with a path toward autonomous checkout. Standard AI will integrate Skip’s cloud-based point-of-sale system with its back office technology post-acquisition, which Standard AI says will streamline operations and provide greater control over pricing and promotions.

Standard AI, which has been deployed with retailers such as Circle K, uses machine vision and AI to enable autonomous storefronts. The company says its technology is deployed and customized in stores without the retailer having to change their existing formats and footprints.

The deal allows Standard AI to offer more options, allowing retailers to reach a wider swath of customers. An autonomous just-walk-out experience can be almost jarring if you’ve never done it before. With a self-checkout option, retailers can give those customers who are not quite ready to just pick up and walk out with their items an option with which they are more comfortable.

Standard AI says it plans to bring to market the world’s first platform that connects self-checkout with autonomous retail later this year, allowing retailers to have the option to use the platform with or without the self-checkout kiosks.

The deal signals what could be a period of consolidation of the retail checkout automation market. Nearly seven years after the launch of Amazon Go, the space has been filled with several startups that offer platforms leveraging machine vision, sensors, and other technologies that enable retailers to move away from more traditional checkout formats. With the tightening of venture and other forms of capital, my guess is we’ll see more combinations like this over the next 12-18 months.

You can watch the video explaining how Standard AI technology is integrated into stores below:

Standard AI's Platform