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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cashierless checkout

With Moscow Store-Within-a-Store, Zippin Shows New Solution for Grocers to Go Cashierless

Zippin announced today that it has opened its first cashierless store-within-a-store at a Azbuka Vkusa supermarket in Moscow. While this marks further international expansion for Zippin, the bigger story is that Azbuka Vkusa’s implementation could model a half-step into cashierless — and contactless — checkout for big grocery store chains.

Zippin is among the many startups making cashierless checkout for retail, which allow shoppers to walk into a store, grab what they want, and go, getting charged automatically as they exit. Zippin’s approach is similar to Amazon Go’s in that it uses a combination of both cameras and shelf sensors to monitor what people take. Last year, Zippin launched its pre-fab Cube, which has all the pieces and technology to make it easier for a store to open up a pop-up cashierless store-within-a-store.

But real estate in an urban environment like Moscow is at a premium, so rather than carving out floor space for a Zippin Cube, Azbuka Vkusa converted one of its existing aisles into a mini-store. The market cordoned off one end, installed cameras on the ceiling, retrofitted the existing shelves with sensors and installed a special QR code-scanning turnstile. Azbuka did all of the implementation with Zippin managing the process remotely.

What makes this interesting is that it’s a proof of concept for big grocery store chains looking to get into cashierless checkout. Grocery stores are like battleships; they can’t turn on a dime, and retrofitting an entire store takes a lot of time and resources, both of which are in short supply during this COVID-19 pandemic.

But the ability to carve out a small part of an existing store, retrofit existing shelves, and stock it with a mix of popular items people want to grab quickly could split the difference. This would allow bigger stores to start implementing cashierless without massive overhauls.

In addition to providing more convenience for shoppers, cashierless checkout is also contactless, an important word in the time of COVID-19. “Since [the] pandemic broke out, we’ve seen a clear increase in inbound inquiries,” Zippin CEO Krishna Motukri told me by phone this week, “The contactless aspect of it is a huge bonus, and probably the main driver of it now.”

Grocery stores are definitely investing in new ways to protect their frontline workers right now and a cashierless section could be an arrow in that particular quiver.

Zippin’s new Moscow location is the latest news in what has been a busy couple of weeks for the cashierless checkout space. Last week, Shopic raised $7.6 million for its tech solution, and this week, Standard Cognition acquired Italian startup, Checkout Technologies.

It’s a pretty safe bet that there is more news on the way as grocers and other retailers experiment and implement new ways of coaxing a nervous public back into their stores.

Cashierless Tech Consolidation: Standard Cognition Buys Checkout Technologies

Standard Cognition, a San Francisco-based cashierless checkout startup, has acquired aptly named Italian company Checkout Technologies, which also does autonomous retail. TechCrunch was first to report the news. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Standard Cognition has raised $86 million in funding, while Checkout had raised just €1.3M ($1.42 USD). Standard Cognition CEO Jordan Fisher told TechCrunch that the two companies had been talking since the middle of last year and were in the final diligence stage of the deal when the COVID-19 pandemic struck Italy particularly hard.

The global COVID-19 crisis could actually help spur adoption of cashierless checkout at retail. The technology allows shoppers to walk into a store, grab what they want and get charged automatically upon exit. This type of contactless transaction reduces the number of human-to-human interactions happening in a store, which could help protect store workers and put shoppers more at ease with in-store shopping.

Fisher also told TechCrunch that he expects to see consolidation in the autonomous checkout space. There is certainly a bevy of startups bringing their cashierless solutions to market. In addition to Standard Cognition and Checkout Technologies, there is Trigo, Grabango, Zippin, Caper, Shopic, Swiftly, Skip, AiFi, and Accel Robotics. Not to mention Amazon, which is the grandaddy of cashierless checkout and will be licensing out its technology. And while Walmart’s IRL store hasn’t implemented cashierless checkout yet, it has banks of cameras monitoring in-store inventory, and it’s not too huge a leap to think they will roll out cashierless options soon.

We started to see some grocery retailers go public with their cashierless partnerships last year. Trigo is at Tesco and Shufersal, Grabango with Giant Eagle, and Zippin with Lojas Americanas. But the big impediment to implementing these cashierless technologies, at least at large grocery chains, is that they need to work at scale and right away. There’s still a learning curve and workflow adoption of cashierless checkout that needs to happen for most consumers.

But the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the adoption of certain technologies around food, especially if they help promote the safety of workers and shoppers alike. Cashierless checkout could be here in a meaningful way sooner than we expected.

Shopic Raises $7.6 Million Series A for its Cashierless Checkout Tech

Shopic, and Israel-based startup that creates cashierless checkout solutions for medium to large grocery stores, announced today that it has raised a $7.6 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by IBI Tech Fund, with participation from existing investor Entrée Capital, and brings the company’s total funding so far to $11 million.

Cashierless checkout systems use computer vision, shelf sensors and artificial intelligence to allow shoppers to walk in to a store, grab what they want and leave, getting charged automatically as they exit.

We weren’t familiar with Shopic before the company emailed us their announcement this morning. Based on Shopic’s website, it appears that unlike other cashierless checkout startups, Shopic’s system does not rely on retrofitting a store with banks of computer vision cameras to monitor what shoppers purchase. Instead, it looks like Shopic uses a shopper’s mobile phone, which they use to scan items as they shop, and there is a component that monitors the shopping cart itself to ensure that there is no shoplifting.

Shopic also allows stores to communicate back to the customer as they shop. So, based on what someone is buying, the store could offer enhanced product information or push customized sales and promotions in real time. Shopic also says its system can also help stores optimize shelf stocking and in-store behavior.

With its fresh round of capital, Shopic says that it will expand deployments of is platform to existing and new customers across Europe and North America, though it will be facing plenty of competition.

Amazon is big pioneer of cashierless checkout with its Go and Go Grocery stores. A host of startups also offer solutions to supermarkets around the world. Trigo, Grabango and Zippin all use Amazon-like systems of cameras and computer vision to keep track of what people are buying. But Shopic seems to be more of a blend between the mobile phone aspect of Swiftly and the cart monitoring of Caper.

Shopic’s fundraise has also come at a unique time. The COVID-19 global pandemic is re-shaping the grocery store experience as retailers attempt to reduce human-to-human contact. As such, preventative measures like facemasks are being worn by store employees and plexiglass shields are going up in front of cashiers.

But at some point, for the people who aren’t too scared to go into the grocery stores themselves, a contactless cashierless checkout might be the best option. You don’t have to interact with a cashier or touch a credit card terminal that potentially hundreds of other people have touched that day.

For sure, there are still questions around equity and jobs that go along with widescale adoption of cashierless checkout. But as the virus continues its rampage and even resurges in some areas, grocery retailers could accelerate more contactless options like cashierless checkout to keep shoppers and workers safe.

An earlier version of this story said Shopic had raised a total of $8.45 million, based on data in Crunchbase. Shopic got in touch with us and provided the accurate dollar figure.

Zippin Waives Setup Fees for Stores that Want Cashierless Checkout Pop-Ups to Sell Essential and Safety Products

Next time I go to that grocery store, my cashier will be scanning my groceries from behind a plexiglass shield, yet another measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus to grocery workers on the front line of this pandemic.

The enormity of the COVID-19 crisis makes me think that cashierless checkout would be really nice to have at a time like this. Shoppers could walk in, grab what they want and go, getting charged automatically upon exit. No interaction with cashiers or baggers, or standing in line with other people.

So I reached out to Krishna Motukuri, Co-Founder of Zippin, to see if there’s been increased interest in his company’s cashierless checkout technology. He said that there has been, particularly in the company’s Zippin Cube, which is a modular pop-up that allows the creation of a cashierless pop-up retail store-within-a-store. In an email to me, Motokuri wrote:

With a Zippin Cube (popup) at the front of the store (or a dedicated aisle converted into a Zippin section) stocking the top-selling products, stores can ease some pressure on their cashiers. Shoppers who need just some cleaning supplies or a cough syrup can walk into the Zippin section, grab those items and leave, without adding to the congestion in the main store.

I mean, it’s his company, so of course he thinks Zippin is a great solution for retailers right now. But the scenario that he describes actually makes a lot of sense. Sick people still have to shop (even in non-COVID-19 times), so they bundle up and head out to the grocery store, wandering the aisles, looking for things like medicine and Gatorade. Then they get in the same checkout lines as the healthy people.

Instead, as Motukuri suggests, grocery or drug stores could build a pop-up near their entrances filled with the items sick people buy. That way, these people, along with those caring for (and thereby in contact with) sick people, can quickly shop in a separate area, limiting contact with store workers and other customers.

This of course, can feel a bit ethically sticky. Prior to the pandemic, the big discussion around cashierless checkout was the removal of another human job. Now that doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. But this vision of a store-within-a-store for sick people does admittedly conjure images of a second-class area for sick people to be shoved into. That’s to say nothing of the unbanked and underbanked not even being able to use cashierless checkout options.

I don’t have a clean answer to that problem. Life was complicated enough even before we implemented a six-foot personal space bubble around us. But these are the questions any retailer setting up cashierless checkout will have to grapple with.

But for those retailers interested in setting up their own cashierless Zippin Cube, Motukuri says his company is waiving all setup fees to stores selling household essentials or health and safety products.

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.

For Swiftly, Cashierless Checkout is a Gateway to a Bigger CPG Relationship

One of the big trends of 2019 was the emergence of cashierless checkout companies — startups retrofitting existing grocers with the technology that allows shoppers to walk in, grab what they want and leave the store, getting automatically charged.

So it’s fitting that as the year winds down, we look at one more cashierless checkout company. Though unlike other players in the space, Swiftly‘s cashierless technology is merely a means to a much bigger end.

Swiftly’s cashierless solution isn’t exactly the type of “friction free” shopping its rivals like Trigo and Grabango are trying to create. To use Swiftly, you must download an app to your phone, use that app to scan an item’s barcode, and then interact with a human in a special checkout lane to confirm you aren’t stealing something. While that may be more complicated for the consumer to use, the lack of hardware installation does make it cheaper for retailers to adopt.

But Swiftly is more interested in what happens after you leave the store. In addition to integrating with a grocer’s POS system, Swiftly’s system is also tied into store’s loyalty program, managing any loyalty points accrued and applying them to purchases when available. Being integrated with the loyalty program means Swifty’s system has a shopper’s purchase history, with which Swiftly can use to suggest products, whether it’s because those items are on sale or because Swiftly’s algorithms think an item might be of interest.

But even that feature is more of a gateway to Swiftly’s much broader goal, which is to leverage a consumer’s relationship with a retailer to become a product discovery service for CPG companies.

In addition to recommending specific items for one-time purchases, Swiftly also suggests shoppers subscribe to specific products. Say you want a steady stream (pardon the pun) of Hawaiian Volcano Water delivered to your door each month. You can do that in the Swiftly app, but what Swiftly is actually doing is connecting you with Hawaiian Volcano Water directly. Hawaiian Volcano Water will drop ship directly to you, but it’s wrapped up in a box with your stores’s branding. Swiftly then, is maintaining the relationship between the consumer and their retailer, and creating a new, direct connection between the consumer and the CPG brand.

I visited Swiftly’s offices in Seattle this past week where Co-Founder and CTO Sean Turner explained that his company’s solution is way for retailers and brands to outmaneuver Amazon. It’s a way for CPGs to sell directly to consumers without having to build out their own sales infrastructure, and without having to cede control over to Amazon.

With Swiftly, a CPG brand can have a direct online relationship with the consumer through Swiftly’s app via the retail brand the consumer trusts, and that CPG doesn’t have to worry as much about being undercut by the retailer.

But Swiftly isn’t the only company that’s closing the gap between consumer and consumer packaged good company. Zippin recently announced a $12 million Series A round of funding led by Evolv Ventures, the venture arm of Kraft-Heinz. As I wrote previously:

As newsy as this fundraise is for Zippin, it’s also worth pointing out Evolv’s decision to lead the round. As noted, Evolv is the venture fund of Kraft Heinz, and it’s easy to see why that CPG giant might be interested in a technology like Zippin’s. The cameras and AI in a cashierless store environment give Kraft Heinz insights closer to the consumer, with the ability to analyze what products are picked up, which ones are put back, and which products are skipped over entirely when people shop.

2019 was a year for funding and public deployments for cashierless checkout startups. Swiftly itself announced a $15.6 million seed round this past September. Look for 2020 to be a year where cashierless checkout doesn’t go full mainstream, but rather, continues a steady pace of adoption with different retailers.

For its part, Swiftly already has one live retail partnership with Zion Market, which has locations in Southern California, Duluth, GA, and Lewisville, TX. Turner wouldn’t get into specifics about revenue models for his company, but between facilitating online sales for retailers, developing direct consumer connections for CPG companies, and providing actionable data to both, Swiftly is setting itself up as a company to definitely checkout in 2020.

Exclusive: Zippin Raises $12M Series A, Announces Cashierless “Cube” Store-in-a-Box

Zippin, a startup creating cashierless checkout experiences for retailers, announced today that it has raised a $12 million Series A round of funding led by Evolv Ventures, the venture fund backed by Kraft Heinz. Other investors include SAP.iO, Scrum Ventures, Arca Continental, and Nomura Research Institute and NTT DOCOMO Ventures from Japan.

Zippin is one of many companies looking to retrofit retailers such as supermarkets with technology to facilitate grab-and-go shopping with no checkout lines. Unlike most of its competition, Zippin doesn’t just rely on cameras and AI to keep track of what people pick up (and put back) while shopping. It also employs shelf-sensors for what it says is a more accurate analysis of what people take and keep as they walk out the door.

As part of today’s announcement, Zippin also said that it is making its technology more portable and accessible to retailers with the introduction of the Zippin Cube. The Zippin Cube is a modular, pre-fabricated cashierless store-in-a-box roughly 300 – 500 sq. ft. that can be assembled in under three weeks upon ordering.

The Zippin Cube is what is currently running in the Golden 1 Center Arena in Sacramento, CA. Zippin Co-Founder and CEO, Krishna Motukuri said to me over the phone last week that unlike other “pop-up” style cashierless checkout experiences — like those from AiFi, which use shipping-container-like structures — the Zippin Cube is modular, so it can fit inside odd-shaped real estate and can even include coolers for beverages and other cold items. Additionally, the Cube comes with all the wiring and mounts ready to go, so it’s easy to install the technology.

These pop-ups promise to be a game changer for food retailers. First, it allows them to quickly and affordably extend their brands into new areas relatively inexpensively. Think: a permanent pop-up mini-Kroger or 7-11 in the lobby of an office building or at a music festival. Or, if you wanted to get really nutty, a supermarket could open up a convenience store inside its existing store. This could be a super fast option for customers just needing one or two very basic grab-and-go items like milk or gum or sodas.

As newsy as this fundraise is for Zippin, it’s also worth pointing out Evolv’s decision to lead the round. As noted, Evolv is the venture fund of Kraft Heinz, and it’s easy to see why that CPG giant might be interested in a technology like Zippin’s. The cameras and AI in a cashierless store environment give Kraft Heinz insights closer to the consumer, with the ability to analyze what products are picked up, which ones are put back, and which products are skipped over entirely when people shop.

We’ve seen a flurry of funding activity in the cashierless checkout space in the last quarter of 2019. Accel Robotics raised $30 million last week, Trigo raised $22 million and Caper raised $10 million, each in September. All this funding is another good indicator that 2020 is going to be a transformational year for cashierless checkout.

Today’s funding brings the total amount raised by Zippin to $15 million. The company previously received an undisclosed strategic investment from Brazillian retailer Lojas Americanas, whos Ame Go convenience stores will be powered by Zippin technology. Zippin said today that it will be launching at new stores in the coming months.

(Photo Credit: Sacramento Kings/Golden 1 Center)

Accel Robotics Raises $30M Series A for its Cashierless Checkout Tech

Accel Robotics, a San Diego-based startup that creates cashierless checkout technology, announced yesterday that it has raised a $30 million Series A round of funding led by SoftBank. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $37 million.

Accel is among a host of companies looking to create so-called frictionless shopping experiences, where shoppers enter a store, grab what they want and then exit, getting charged automatically for what they take.

We don’t know much about Accel’s technology or how it differentiates from others in the space. According to the funding press announcement, Accel uses a camera-based system along with AI to determine what people pick up (and put back). So it sounds more like Trigo and Grabango than Zippin, or even Amazon Go, both of which augment computer vision with shelf sensors.

Accel says that its technology is already being used by grocery stores, restaurants, and convenience stores in both Japan and North America. Unlike other companies in this cashierless cohort, however, Accel isn’t publicly naming those partners.

This year has been a transformational one for cashierless startups as many have announced many of their clientele: Trigo is working with Shufersal and Tesco, Grabango with Giant Eagle, Zippin with Lojas Americanas and Caper with Sobeys.

To be sure, competition is fierce in this space. Even Amazon, which kicked off the whole cashierless craze, is reportedly in talks to license out its technology to third parties, which could alter the competitive landscape even further. But there are a lot of grocery and convenience stores around the world, so there is plenty of opportunity to go around.

Accel says that it plans to use its new funding to expand worldwide by “growing operations, increasing manufacturing capacity, and streamlining its expanding deployment pipeline.”

How Could Amazon Licensing its Go Technology Impact Other Cashierless Startups?

Bloomberg has a story out today saying that Amazon’s cashierless checkout ambitions are much bigger in both size and scope than its current bodega-sized Go stores. A source told Bloomberg that Amazon is looking to outfit its own larger-sized grocery stores with its checkout tech and also license it out to other retailers.

Bloomberg’s story complements an earlier CNBC report saying that Amazon was looking to license out its cashierless checkout technology, though the licensees listed then were airports and movie theaters. But if we know that Amazon is opening its own larger format grocery stores, developing new Go-like systems that work in larger format stores and is now actively seeking to license out its cashierless technology, what does that mean for all the other startups now in the cashierless checkout space?

As a quick refresher, Amazon Go stores are grab-and-go retail experiences. Shoppers scan their phone as they walk into the store where banks of cameras and sensors keep track of what people grab and what they keep, and charge them automatically upon exiting.

Amazon isn’t the only company working on this cashierless checkout technology, and we cover a number of the other players in the space. Trigo, Grabango, Standard Cognition, Caper, Zippin are all startups looking to retrofit existing grocery stores with cashierless checkout tech.

Many of these startups have even already announced retailer relationships: Trigo is being used by Shufersal in Israel and Tesco in the U.K., Grabango has Giant Eagle, Caper has Sobeys in Canada and Zippin has Lojas Americanos in Brazil.

There are a lot of grocery retailers in the world, so there’s plenty of opportunity to go around, but one has to wonder how Amazon’s 800 lb. gorilla will alter the current playing field.

To be sure, I don’t imagine large, nationwide retailers like Albertsons or Kroger, who are already scared of Amazon’s grocery growth and working overtime to fight them off, would want to then turn around and license Amazon technology. And Amazon’s largest rival, Walmart, has already built out its own Intelligent Retail Lab, which currently uses cameras and sensors to monitor inventory, but seems primed for expansion into cashierless checkout at some point.

However, smaller, regional chains might be interested in adding Go-like capabilities to their stores. And they might be more willing to license Amazon tech, which comes with a brand recognition, world-class technology and a sense of permanence (i.e. they won’t run out of money and shut down).

Amazon would surely be keen to license its Go tech to smaller chains, perhaps even at a discounted rate because it would give the company something just as valuable as money: all that shopping data. By licensing out the means for purchasing, Amazon would still get all that data about what is bought and when, without having to build out stores everywhere in the U.S. This data could then be used to feed the algorithms to make the stores they do build out physical spaces more efficient.

All this is to say that 2019 was a transitional year for cashierless checkout startups with lots of partnerships announced publicly. But with Amazon looking like it’s getting into the game, those startups will need to scale up and lock down even more retailer agreements before it’s too late.

Caper to Bring its Cashierless Checkout Smart Carts to Sobeys in Canada

Caper announced today that its cashierless checkout-enabling smart shopping carts will be deployed to the Sobeys chain of grocery stores in North America. Caper will make its debut today at the Sobey’s Glenn Abbey in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

Unlike other cashierless shopping startups that install lots of cameras in ceilings in grocery stores to keep track of what people grab and keep, Caper moves that technology to the shopping cart. Shoppers scan their items as they put them in the cart and get automatically charged as they leave the store.

The advantage to this solution, according to Caper, is that stores can implement cashierless checkout without needing to retrofit their stores. It also scales to larger stores easily, which is something that is more complex with computer vision-based systems. The Oakville Sobeys is 41,000 sq. ft. and Caper’s press announcement didn’t specify how many carts are going live or any timeline for a rollout across Sobeys 1,500 locations. Caper raised $10 million last month and at that time said it would deploy 1,000 carts in the coming year.

With the Sobeys announcement, Caper becomes the latest cashierless tech startup to publicly announce a retail partnership, something most of them had been unwilling to do until recently. Earlier this month Trigo announced a partnership with (and investment from) Tesco. AiFi launched a cashierless NanoStore for Ahold Delhaize in the Netherlands. Zippin partnered with (and received an investment from) Lojas Americanas in Brazil. And Grabango has partnered with Giant Eagle.

All this momentum heading into the end of the year could translate into tipping point, with rollouts of cashierless checkout stores accelerating in 2020.

AiFi’s Cashierless Checkout Promises Real-Time Receipts, and Nano-Sized Stores

I recently took a friend on her first Amazon Go shopping experience. She walked in, grabbed her things and walked out, as one does in Amazon’s cashierless checkout store. But she didn’t receive her receipt notification until a few minutes after we left the store.

I too have experienced this type of gap, and while I’m sure Amazon will always get its money, the bigger concern in that “dark” time is whether or not Amazon Go’s sensors and cameras accurately tallied what I took. If I don’t get a receipt until I’m back at the office and it’s wrong and they charged me too much, do I then trudge back down to the store? And at that point, how do I prove I didn’t take something?

Removing this receipt delta is one area where startup AiFi (pronounced eye-fye) thinks it has a competitive advantage in the cashierless checkout space. I spoke with Steve Gu, cofounder and CEO of the Santa Clara, CA-based company this week, who told me that the AiFi system delivers receipts in 200 milliseconds upon leaving a store. So, basically in real time.

But customers aren’t shopping at cashierless checkout stores just for faster receipts. The whole point is a more convenient buying experience, another area where AiFi might have an edge as the cashierless concept moves more into the mainstream. In addition to retrofitting existing stores with cameras and sensors to create frictionless shopping, AiFi is also building small, modular NanoStores.

These NanoStores vary in size but think of something like a shipping container converted into a convenience store. Last month, Ahold Delhaize installed and opened up a 150 sq. ft version of AiFi’s NanoStore under the Albert Heijn brand in the Netherlands. The store doesn’t even require a mobile app to enter, with customers able to use their debit or credit card to gain entrance. You can see it in action in this video:

Albert Heijn's digital store

The power of the NanoStore lies in its ability to extend a retail brand into new venues without having to do a big buildout. For example, a Safeway could open a cashierless grocery checkout pop-up store in an office building, a college campus or even an outdoor music festival. This type of semi-permanent retail is something DeepMagic has also worked on. More recently, it’s been reported that Amazon might license out its Go tech for similar type stores in cinemas and airports.

Though these NanoStores are easy to set up and run, Gu insisted that AiFi isn’t focused solely on those form factors, and that its technology scales up to larger store footprints as well.

While AiFi has been laying low — Gu said the company didn’t even announce the $11 million Series A round it closed in January of this year — it’s been busy lining up retail partners around the globe. AiFi has announced retail partnerships with the aforementioned Ahold Delhaize, Carrefour in France, Valora in Switzerland, and Żabka in Poland.

As we’ve said before, 2019 is turning into a transitional year for cashierless checkout. Startups providing the technology are maturing, and others in the space, such as Trigo, Grabango and Zippin, have all announced big retail partners this year.

With a total addressable market of, well, any retailer in the world, the cashierless checkout game is not a zero sum one. Lots of startups will get plenty of deals. The question for AiFi will be whether it gets a strategic investment from one of its retail partners like Trigo and Zippin did, and whether AiFi will be able to sign up new partners as fast as it will give you a receipt.

It’s Official, Tesco is Using — and Investing in — Trigo’s Cashierless Checkout Tech

Earlier this summer we heard rumblings that UK-based grocer Tesco was working with Trigo on cashierless checkout stores. Those rumblings have now been confirmed: Trigo informed The Spoon this morning that the two companies have announced a partnership that also includes an equity investment by Tesco in Trigo.

The exact amount Tesco invested was not disclosed, but it follows a recent $22 million Series A round raised by Trigo last month. Trigo’s total amount of publicly disclosed funding is $29 million.

Trigo retrofits stores with cameras, computer vision and AI software to create cashierless checkout retail experiences. Consumers enter a store, grab what they want and leave with the payment automatically processed.

This is the second retail partnership for Trigo, following one with Israel-based supermarket chain Shufersal last year. According to a Trigo company spokesperson, the startup has been working with Tesco for more than a year.

Details of the partnership were scarce, but the fact that Tesco publicly name-checked Trigo is another example of how cashierless grocery checkout is maturing. Retailers are no longer privately testing out these systems, but instead making announcements about them. Giant Eagle is working with Grabango and Brazil’s Lojas Americanas has partnered with Zippin. Worth noting as well is that both Trigo and Zippin have received strategic investments from retail partners, a sign that Lojas Americanas and Tesco are serious about implementing, or at least more deeply exploring, cashierless checkout.

Today’s news also comes during the same week that we learned Amazon is going ahead with leases for its own grocery store chains. The e-commerce giant reportedly has plans to open dozens of grocery store locations in addition to its existing Whole Foods stores. What we don’t know yet is whether Amazon will be using the same cashierless checkout technology it uses in its Amazon Go stores at these new grocery outlets.

With 6,800 locations, Tesco represents a potentially big outlet (and payday) for Trigo. Today’s partnership does, however, come one day after Tesco’s CEO abruptly left the company. Will the new CEO feel the same way about cashierless checkout? Momentum for this friction-free shopping seems to be gaining, so the trick now will be to see how consumers — and retailers — take to the idea.