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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Amazon Go

Micromart Wants to Create Just-Walk-Out Convenience Anywhere With Its Just-Plug-In Cabinets

Earlier this month, we learned that Amazon is phasing out its Just Walk Out technology at its Amazon Fresh grocery stores. The company didn’t say much about the reasoning behind it, but one likely reason is customers never valued skipping the checkout line in a traditional grocery store shopping experience as much as Amazon anticipated.

But that doesn’t mean shoppers don’t value speed to completion and low-friction shopping experiences. Getting in and out quickly is highly desirable when watching a ballgame or picking up something quickly for lunch during the workday. That’s why Amazon will continue to keep its Just Walk Out technology in sports stadiums and in its Amazon Go fast-format convenience stores, which are typically located in busy downtown office corridors.

Still, do we need whole stores outfitted with cameras and sensors? What if we could condense all this down to a couple of cabinets that can sit in any condo or office lobby?

That’s the idea behind Micromart, an eponymously named micro-market platform from the same Toronto-based team behind Kitchenmate. Micromart’s solution uses AI-powered image recognition technology, putting it into standalone refrigerated cabinets that fit anywhere with a little floor space and a power outlet to plug the cabinets in.

To open the locked refrigerated or freezer cabinet, the customer taps with their phone. They open the cabinet, grab the item(s) off the shelf, and once they close the cabinet, a receipt is generated. If the item is a meal that needs to be heated, the customer can then heat the meal in a “smart cooker” that is attached to the cabinet.

The addition of a food heating system is one of the major differentiators for the Micromart solution, something that company CEO Yang Yu says they developed for Kitchenmate. Kitchenmate, which The Spoon covered way back in 2019, started as a combination food-to-go service for condos and offices. According to Yu, it was while looking for available technology to enable easy unattended purchases of their Kitchenmate meals that the company realized they would need to make their own smart fridges and commerce system.

“We started with the heater,” said Yu. “That was the only thing we had, but then we realized we needed to put the food somewhere, so we built a fridge. When we built the fridge, we were looking at AI companies that did just-walk-out technology, but all of them had issues, and they were all very expensive. And none of them were very accurate. So we had to build our own.”

After building just-walk-out technology for their fridge and deploying it in different locations, they realized the refrigerated cabinets and the heating system were the business. Not long after, Micromart was born.

One reason that Yu and his team saw this as a potential big business is the realization that many office buildings are shutting down cafeterias, often replacing them with just a couple of vending machines. While some solutions, like Farmer’s Fridge, provide fresh options, there aren’t many choices for fresh and hot food.

“Nobody wants to eat vending food,” said Yu. “There’s definitely success stories around healthy vending, but you’re not going to get the variety and the hot food that people expect out of a cafeteria.”

In addition to the refrigerated cabinets and the food heating system, the Micromart solution comes with software as a service that lets retailers track and forecast inventory, electric price tags, and built-in digital ad displays that the operator can customize. The company’s offering also includes a Shop consumer app that can be customized with the operator’s branding. Pricing for a three-cabinet system is $19 thousand for the cabinets, plus transaction and monthly SaaS fees.

Micro-markets aren’t new. Researchers estimate that the micromarket business in the US was almost $4 billion in 2022 and expect it to grow by 13% through 2030. However, many of the solutions are not much more than refrigerators with RFID scanning or weight sensors built in. Other solutions, like those deployed at airports, require the customer to pick up the items and go through a self-checkout scan, often with a store employee eyeing them from close by. Micromart wanted to marry the lighter footprint of older cabinet systems with the more advanced Amazon Go-like vision systems.

“The whole premise behind this was that you could literally put it anywhere in North America,” said Yu. All you need is a standard electrical outlet, and you plug it in, and it works.”

According to Yu, the Micromart solution will debut at the NAMA show in May.

Watch as Seahawks Fans Use Amazon’s Just Walk Out Technology at Lumen Field

Now that the Geno Smith-led Seahawks have become a much better team by letting Russell Wilson walk out the door, they’re letting their fans do a little walking of their own.

This season, their home stadium (Lumen Field) became the first NFL stadium to deploy Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology. The technology, which allows users to pick up items and walk out without going to a cashier, first debuted by Amazon down the street at Amazon Go. Since then, cashierless checkout startups have proliferated, but none with the market traction of Amazon’s pioneering platform.

The new deployment at Lumen also includes the company’s Amazon One technology, which allows consumers to tie their credit card to their palmprint, enabling them to scan in with their palm and walk out when they are done shopping.

Amazon’s VP of Just Walk Out (and former smart kitchen entrepreneur), Jon Jenkins, pointed out why this type of technology makes sense in a sports stadium scenario.

“Just Walk Out is so important in sports because the last thing you want to do at a stadium is stand in line waiting for a beer while a huge play happens.”

You can watch a video of the Just Walk Out-powered Lumen Field store below.

Lumen Field's District Market, powered by Just Walk Out technology by Amazon

Circle K Planning To Deploy Seven Thousand AI-Powered Self-Checkout Machines

Mashgin, a maker of computer-vision-based self-checkout machines, announced today it has signed a deal with Circle K parent company Couche-Tard to deploy seven thousand self-checkout machines at the convenience store chain over the next three years.

The move follows the initial deployment of Mashgin systems at nearly 500 Circle K stores across the United States and Sweden since 2020. The move by the second-largest convenience store chain in North America with almost seven thousand stores will represent one of the largest ever deployments of self-checkout systems to date.

For Mashgin, the deal represents its biggest customer win yet and is yet another sign of why the company was able to recently raise a $62.5M Series B round at an impressive $1.5 billion valuation. The move represents a 700% total increase in deployments over its current installed base.

The Mashgin self-checkout system is installed at the checkout counter and enables customer checkouts without scanning barcodes. As seen in the video interview from CES in January, customers can essentially toss their items onto the small checkout pad, and the system will automatically recognize and tabulate the products.

The Spoon checks out Mashgin's AI-Powered Checkout at CES 2022

The decision by one of the world’s largest convenience store chains to equip most of its store footprint with self-checkout is a sign of just how quickly this technology has been embraced ever since Amazon helped kickstart the category off six years ago with its Amazon Go store concept. For its part, 7-Eleven’s push into self-checkout has centered around its Mobile Checkout system, which allows users to scan items with a smartphone and pay on their smartphones.

Grocery stores like Kroger are also experimenting with self-checkout, trialing concepts like smart shopping carts. Online grocery pioneer Instacart diversified into cashierless checkout last year with the acquisition of Caper, and has recently started to call itself a ‘retail enablement platform’ provider.

Tech-Powered Retail is Flourishing in the Food Industry. Everywhere Else, Not So Much

When B8ta launched in 2015, I loved the idea. What wasn’t there to like about a highly experiential, tech-powered retail concept where consumers could try out cool new gadgets and companies could get invaluable early feedback about their products?

The same with Amazon Books, which opened the same year. I mean, sure, it almost seemed cruel that the dominant e-tailer was going to head to head with Barnes & Noble on their turf, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued to see how the tech giant might rethink physical goods retail.

Fast forward to this year, and within the span of a couple weeks, we’ve learned both B8ta and Amazon Books are closing their doors.

Contrast this with the world of food retail. Everyone from Amazon to Walmart to upstarts like Nourish & Bloom are employing cutting-edge technology like AI, robotics, and more to power new food shopping experiences. So why is it that tech-powered food retail is flourishing while other retail concepts seem to struggle?

Part of it may be due to changing consumer habits post-COVID. B8ta founder Vibhu Norby talked about this when explaining the company’s struggles with Modern Retail:

“Although foot traffic began to tick back up, “a lot of specialty retailers like us, we had a much slower recovery curve,” Norby said. “A lot of landlords – they were looking at percentages, looking at averages…trying to determine who they should give concessions to.” 

That slower-than-expected recovery led the company to close 15 of its stores roughly a year ago to cut costs, even though b8ta was still on the hook for leases. “We didn’t really have a choice…part of the plan was to negotiate settlements of different types with the landlords,” Norby said. Eight stores in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York and Texas remained open. 

In other words, physical goods retail had struggled for years and COVID just made things much worse, killing walk-in traffic during the worst part of the pandemic and permanently reducing traffic during the long and slow recovery.

Another big reason is that most retail industries outside of food have already been cannibalized by e-commerce. Items like books and electronics, which is pretty much all Amazon Books sold. Of course, it has to be noted that Amazon itself is as responsible for the death of physical goods retail as anyone, all of which makes the Amazon Books concept seem something of a self-indulgent thought experiment. But thought experiment or not, it does say something that a company as inventive and tech-forward company as Amazon couldn’t make physical retail work.

Finally, it may have a lot to do with how entrenched physical retail food shopping is, even two years into a period of massive growth for online grocery shopping. The reality is that even after grandma and grandpa finally tried Instacart, most people, young and old, continue to shop for some or all of their groceries at their local store. That’s for many reasons, whether it’s the difficulty of selling fresh food online or the last-minute nature of many dinner plans. Still, I imagine the biggest reason is this: Consumers like to see, touch, smell, and taste the food before buying it.

I still think there’s a future for new retail concepts, but potential operators should tread carefully and make sure it’s not an industry where consumers can easily buy the product on Amazon or elsewhere.

And, if possible, sell some food.

Starbucks and Amazon Combine Forces to Create a Cashierless Coffee Shop

Wonder Twin powers, activate: Form of a cashierless coffee shop.

That’s right, today two Seattle-based giants, Starbucks and Amazon, announced they’ve combined their formidable superpowers to create a cashierless coffee shop. The new shop, called Starbucks Pickup with Amazon Go, debuts today in New York City.

The new Pickup store uses Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, a system that features a variety of cutting-edge tech like computer vision and IoT sensors, as well as Amazon’s bio-authentication hand-scanning technology, Amazon One.

Here’s how it works: Customers order through the Starbucks app and can check order status on a digital screen. When it’s ready, coffee is picked up directly from the barista. The Pickup store also includes a mini-Go store stocked with snack and lunch items, as well as a lounge area. Access to both the store and the lounge is enabled through a one-time code from the Amazon Go app, a credit card swipe, or checking in via Amazon One’s hand-ID system. Once authenticated, customers can drop items from the store into their cart and will be charged once they leave.

The lounge is slightly different from the usual Starbucks store format in that it features individual work cubbies alongside the standard tables and chairs. Each cubby is equipped with USB ports and power outlets.

According to a company spokesperson, the two companies plan to open two additional Pickups over the next year, with the second one slated to open in the New York Times building. Beyond that, the company isn’t saying, but given Starbucks’ focus on upgrading their formats to enable quicker service and less overall contact post-pandemic, my guess is that if the initial stores work well, the Pickup format will become a go-to for Starbucks moving forward.

You can see the store in the B-roll provided by Starbucks below:

Starbucks Pickup Store, Featuring Amazon Just Walk Out Technology

Airport Store Chain Hudson Opens Up First Amazon-Powered Cashierless Store

Hudson, the chain of stores you’ve most likely purchased a bottle of water from while waiting at an airport, announced yesterday the opening of its first Hudson Nonstop store. The new store features Amazon’s Just Walk Out cashierless checkout technology, allowing customers to walk in, grab what they want and leave without needing to wait in line.

Now open at Gate 10 at the Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL), the new Hudson Nonstop is a freestanding 500 sq. ft. store that has a single point of entry and exit. Customers swipe or tap their credit as they enter the store, grab what they want, and exit, getting charged automatically for whatever items they took.

Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which powers Amazon Go stores, uses cameras, computer vision, shelf sensors and artificial intelligence to keep track of what items people take and leave the store with.

Hudson launching its own line of stores using Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology is the latest news in what has already been a busy year for the cashierless checkout space. Since January we’ve seen Zippin launch a cashierless convenience store in a hotel in Japan, AiFi partner with Wundermart and Standard Cognition raise $150 million.

The pandemic is helping drive all this activity as retailers look to create more contactless retail experiences. With cashierless checkout, there is no human cashier to act as a vector of transmission (or get the virus themselves), and customers don’t need to stand in lines near each other as they wait to pay. Additionally, early evidence suggests that cashierless checkout creates a faster shopping experience, so people spend less time inside the store.

An airport is actually the perfect place for a cashierless checkout store. While the pandemic remains a looming public health threat, people have a heightened awareness of hygiene while traveling by plane. Removing at least one human interaction while getting a pack of gum can help make things a little easier. But even after the pandemic recedes and people start traveling again en masse, flyers buying items at airports want to do so quickly. Skipping the checkout line altogether makes buying that bottle of water as you race to your gate a less stressful proposition.

Amazon Launches Palm-based Contactless Payment Method

You have to, errrr, hand it to Amazon. The e-commerce giant today announced Amazon One, a new contactless payment method that relies on scanning your palm as you enter its store.

Amazon One is now an entry option at two of Amazon’s Go stores in Seattle (the 7th & Blanchard and South Lake Union stores, if you’re in the Emerald City). To use the new system, you insert your credit card into the terminal and hover your palm over the device. The terminal scans your palm print and from that point on, you just need to hold your hand over the One terminal upon entering the store. After that, the Go technology kicks in and automatically keeps track of and charges you for what you take from the store.

You do not need an Amazon account to use Amazon One, just a mobile phone and a credit card. But you can tie your Amazon account to One, should you choose.

In addition to its own physical stores, which include Go convenience stores, Go Grocery stores, Fresh grocery stores, Prime stores and more, Amazon envisions One being used by other retailers. From the blog post announcing the technology:

In most retail environments, Amazon One could become an alternate payment or loyalty card option with a device at the checkout counter next to a traditional point of sale system. Or, for entering a location like a stadium or badging into work, Amazon One could be part of an existing entry point to make accessing the location quicker and easier.

We’ve heard rumblings about some form of pay-with-your palm coming from Amazon for awhile now, so today’s announcement isn’t a surprise. It’s also not a surprise given Amazon’s devotion to speed and efficiency. Scanning your phone to enter a Go store may be easy, but waving your hand over a device is much easier and faster. This, in turn, could entice you to choose an Amazon store over the competition more often.

Amazon One is also coming out during a global pandemic and at a time when retailers are looking for more contactless payment methods. Amazon also licenses out its cashierless Go technology, and combining the two could be an attractive contactless option for retailers

Of course, given Amazon’s increasing dominance in not only retail but many other facets of our everyday lives, people may be reluctant to hand over their biometric data like a palm print. In its One FAQ, Amazon said it chose palm prints because they are more private, and that you can delete your data from the service after signing up.

I don’t need to be a palm reader to see that One will probably play an increasingly important part of Amazon’s physical retail experience, and that we could see it in a lot of other stores in the coming years.

Dunkin Donuts

Cashierless Tech Could Move Dunkin’ Ahead in the Race to Reinvent the QSR Format

QSR chain Dunkin’ will launch its cashierless checkout pilot program in October at a store in California, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. And in doing so, it may set new standards for restaurant chains when it comes to how they deploy contactless tech.

News of Dunkin’s foray into the world of Amazon Go-style checkout first surfaced at the end of August, when Mastercard announced several partnerships to deploy its newly launched Shop Anywhere platform, which is powered by Accel Robotics. Shop Anywhere uses the computer vision and AI technology of Accel robotics provide checkout-free restaurant and retail experiences. 

At the California Dunkin’ location, that means customers will opt into the Shop Anywhere platform via the Dunkin’ mobile app, then receive a QR code to enter the store. From there, customers can grab their coffee and donuts and simply walk out of the store. Accel’s system uses computer vision to keep track of items and sends a digital receipt to the customer once they leave the store.

Companies are already testing this “grab-and-go” format in several grocery and convenience store formats, but Dunkin’ is one of the first to make such an announcement in the QSR realm. 

And cashierless tech may well set the chain apart at a time when more and more QSRs are making public their high-tech visions of future store formats. At the end of last week, Burger King unveiled its plans for a physically smaller space that emphasizes to-go formats and contactless ordering and payments. Taco Bell brought news of its “Go Mobile” format in August. Shake Shack and Chipotle have also made announcements of their own around new formats driven by more technology and fewer interactions between customers and restaurant staff.

All of those examples still rely on customers placing orders, manually paying, then waiting for their food. Being able to simply grab an item and leave the store without having to do any of those things would definitely provide a faster, more efficient, and truly contactless restaurant experience.

Dunkin’s menu, which is primarily coffee and donuts, rather than customized orders, lends itself to such a model. But there are plenty of QSRs out there at which the cashierless format would make sense, Starbucks being the prime example. Cashierless checkout could even make sense at other chains for certain items that can be pre-prepped — for example, if someone just wanted to grab some chips and queso from Chipotle. White Castle, too, plans to experiment with cashierless checkout, and is another Mastercard partner planning too deploy Shop Anywhere later this fall.

None of this is quite a reality yet, but Dunkin’ for the last couple years has proven itself an early adopter of restaurant tech. It was one of the first to offer drive-thru lanes dedicated to mobile orders, and has since opened several of its next-generation stores that feature self-service kiosks, geofence-enabled delivery, and other to-go-friendly tools and technologies. Seen in that light, cashierless checkout seems the next logical step, and one others will inevitably take as well in the near future. 

The Food Tech Show: How Coronavirus is Accelerating Certain Food Tech Sectors

It’s a scary and confusing time, so I hope getting together with some familiar food tech friends will give you a 30 or so minute respite from the madness.

One warning in advance though: we do talk a little coronavirus, but we do look at the possible bright side for some of those sectors in the food tech space where the outbreak could accelerate adoption.

Other stories we discuss in today’s pod include:

As always, you can find The Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your pods. You can also download it direct to your device or just click play below.

Audio Player

Cibo Express Markets to use Amazon’s Just Walk Out Tech in Some Airport Locations

Hospitality company OTG announced today that it will be using Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” cashierless checkout technology at its Cibo Express Gourmet Markets at select airports starting next week.

The first cashierless Cibo Market will open on March 16 at Newark Liberty’s Terminal C. Following that, additional stores will open at Newark Liberty and LaGuardia.

To shop at the stores, customers will swipe their credit card upon entering the store, grab what they want and “just walk out” getting charged automatically upon exit.

Amazon announced that it had started selling its Just Walk Out technology to third parties earlier this week, and OTG, to our knowledge, is the first publicly announced customer. Amazon’s Just Walk Out service provides the technology infrastructure, such as cameras, sensors and software, that allows retailers to create their own cashierless checkout stores a la Amazon Go.

We’ve known for a while that Amazon was eyeing airports as good locations for its cashierless retail experience. Anyone late for a flight and stuck behind an indecisive traveler struggling over which Tic-Tac flavor to get can grok the appeal of grabbing what you want from the shelf and going. What remains to be seen now is what kind of mix between first-party Amazon stores and third-party stores like Cibo Market Amazon will pursue.

One thing is for sure: the airport retail experience is on the cusp of major changes, especially when it comes to food. In addition to cashierless retail, airports are also prime locations for the new wave of automated vending machines. Briggo partnered with SSP America to open up 25 robot barista locations at airports. Cafe X has its robot coffee at two Bay Area airports, and Yo-Kai Express has installed its first ramen machine at SFO.

All these services are coming online, though, at a time when the coronavirus is keeping many people from traveling. Hopefully these startups have stockpiled enough cash to weather this storm.

Amazon Selling its “Just Walk Out” Cashierless Tech to Other Retailers

Amazon is now selling the cashierless technology used in its Go stores to other retailers, Reuters reports. The business line is called “Just Walk Out,” and Amazon says it has already signed up several customers for the service.

The Just Walk Out technology is being used at a number of Amazon Go convenience stores across the country and the just-launched, larger Go Grocery store in Seattle. Using a combination of computer vision, shelf sensors and deep learning, Just Walk Out allows shoppers to do just that — grab an item and walk out, getting charged automatically upon exit.

There is one big difference in the way this technology is being offered to other retailers. Unlike Go stores, where you scan the Amazon Go app on your phone in order to enter a store, Just Walk Out for third party retailers will require shoppers to insert their credit card into a (Amazon branded) turnstile as they enter. The technology still monitors your shopping the same way, it would at an Amazon Go store, but if you need a receipt, there will be a kiosk for you to associate an email with that credit card.

As Reuters points out, this type of setup does bring up the question of who owns the customer data. If customers are handing over their email address, what type of relationship is it entering into with Amazon? Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology told Reuters that Amazon saves the email and credit card information only for the purpose of charging the customer.

But that still leaves a ton of data around when customers shop, how often, what times, what they pick up in stores and what they put back, etc.. That’s a treasure trove of information that Amazon could use to feed its own algorithms and apply to its own real world retail game.

The actual news today isn’t actually that big of a surprise for industry watchers. CNBC reported last year that Amazon was looking to sell its cashierless tech to third parties to places like movie theaters.

But the big question is who will adopt this. It’s unlikely that grocery retailers like Albertsons or Kroger would be interested. They are already locked in a heated battle with Amazon as the e-commerce giant rolls out physical stores like the aforementioned Go Grocery, and its forthcoming chain of full-on supermarkets in Los Angeles. So there’s no real incentive to hand Amazon more money.

Plus, there are a lot of options for retailers looking to add cashierless checkout to their retail experiences. Trigo, Grabango, AiFi, Caper, and Zippin all offer cashierless solutions that either retrofit existing stores, or extend their brand with smaller, self-contained, standalone cashierless retail experiences.

Having said that, in many ways, Amazon could be for cashierless tech was IBM was for computing technology in the past. The saying used to go “no one gets fired for buying IBM,” and with Amazon’s size and track record, the Bezos behemoth could be the safe choice for smaller retailers to up their high-tech offerings.

Amazon Opens New, Bigger Cashierless Go Grocery, Which Stocks 5,000 Items, Detects Produce

Amazon opened a new, bigger version of its cashierless Go stores in Seattle this morning, in a move that expands the store format’s footprint and capabilities.

The new Go Grocery is located in the city’s Capital Hill neighborhood is 10,400 sq. feet and carries 5,000 items. By comparison, up to now, the Go convenience stores have ranged between 450 and 2,700 sq. feet and stocked just 500 to 700 items. An Amazon rep told Bloomberg that Go Grocery is aimed more at apartment dwellers than the office workers other Go stores typically serve.

Just like it’s smaller convenience store bretheren, Amazon’s Go Grocery uses a series of built-in cameras and sensors to automatically monitor what shoppers pick up and keep, and charge them accordingly when they walk out of the store. However, the new version of this cashierless technology has been updated, allowing Go Grocery to expand and also automatically monitor the purchase of fresh items like apples and lettuce, which had been harder for computer vision and sensors to keep track of.

The opening of this high-tech new Grocery Go comes as Amazon is set to launch the first of its very own chain of full-sized supermarket stores in Los Angeles. While that format won’t include cashierless checkout, it will reportedly feature robot-powered micro-fulfillment for faster online order processing and delivery/pickup.

What’s interesting about the larger Go Grocery format opening in Seattle, is that it runs counter to some earlier reporting that Go stores function better at smaller sizes. As we wrote in September:

The Information reviewed an Amazon internal analysis document, which revealed that the ideal size for an Amazon Go store was 1,440 sq. feet (not including the entryway). The decision teams at Amazon faced was to figure out how to best design the store and offer the best selection of inventory to meet fill the space and hit the sales goal.

Evidently running 25 Amazon Go stores of various sizes across the country taught Bezos and Co. a whole bunch about getting more cashierless bang for your buck.

As Amazon’s continues to make aggressive moves like larger cashierless checkout formats, free two-hour delivery and its own line of supermarkets, we’ll have to see how this spurs on its rivals. Will this accelerate retailer adoption of other cashierless checkout systems from the likes of Trigo, Grabango and Caper?

Last year was one where cashierless checkout started emerging from stealth, as retailers publicly announced cashierless tech partners. We are two months into 2020, and Amazon has just fired off a loud shot announcing that the space isn’t slowing down anytime soon.