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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cashierless checkout

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!

Accel Robotics to Launch Autonomous Valet Market in High-Rise Community

Cashierless checkout startup Accel Robotics announced today its autonomous Valet Market will soon open inside the Vantage Pointe high-rise residential building, located in the company’s hometown of San Diego, California.

The 1,500 square foot store is “designed as a shared pantry for the neighborhood,” and will stock locally-sourced items, such as produce, baked goods and dairy, along with typical convenience store fare. Like many cashierless checkout stores, customers need to download a mobile app to check into and shop there. Once inside, shoppers grab what they want and leave, getting charged automatically upon exit.

Accel monitors what shoppers take through a combination of cameras, computer vision and shelf sensors, which is the same approach taken by other autonomous checkout players like Zippin and Amazon Go. The inclusion of shelf sensors in addition to computer vision can help bolster accuracy when keeping track of what shoppers pick up.

The store will be open to the public during the day, but only available to residents after business hours. Additionally, Valet Market will offer “last step” delivery to Vantage Pointe residents, so they won’t even need to leave their apartments.

The launch of Valet Market continues cashierless checkout’s strong momentum on display so far this year. In the first half of 2021 AiFi has partnered with Wundermart to open one thousand autonomous stores, Standard Cognition raised $150 million for its cashierless tech, and startups around the world like Supersmart, Imagr and Nomitri come out of stealth.

But Accel’s launch of the Valet Market could be another indication that cashierless checkout stores will soon be a standard perk for high-end residential communities. We saw this start last year when AWM Smartshelf partnered with Aramark to create the QuickEats Close Convenience located inside the Nineteen01 apartment complex in Santa Ana, California. Having a dedicated cashierless convenience store inside large residential complexes actually makes a lot of sense. It’s super convenient for residents to run to the lobby for last-minute milk than heading out to the supermarket. The cashierless store can be open around the clock, and the building owner doesn’t have to pay for people to work in the store.

In addition to operating its own Valet Market, Accel said it will be announcing partnerships with other U.S. brands including universities, sports venues, military bases and fuel stations. In August of last year, credit card company Mastercard partnered with Accel Robotics to create a cashierless checkout solution for stores and announced it had lined up customers including Circle K, Delaware North and Dunkin’.

We are on the precipice of cashierless checkout becoming mainstream. If you want to see where the whole autonomous store space is headed, then you should definitely attend ArticulATE, our food robotics and automation virtual conference on May 18. We’ll have speakers from both Zippin and Nomitri talking about the technology and opportunities in the sector. Get your ticket today!

Portugal: Sensei Raises $6.5M for its Cashierless Checkout Tech

Sensei, a Lisbon, Portugal-based cashierless checkout startup, announced today that it has raised a $6.5 million Seed round of funding. TechCrunch was first to report the news, writing that the round was led by Seaya Ventures and Iberis Capital, with participation from 200M Fund.

Sensei’s approach to cashierless checkout retrofits existing stores with a combination of cameras, computer vision, AI and sensors to keep track of what shoppers pick out. Shoppers are then automatically charged upon leaving the store.

Sensei’s technology sounds similar to the way Zippin and Amazon handle cashierless checkout as all three use a combination of cameras and sensors. Other solutions on the market like Grabango rely solely on cameras, or Supersmart, which combines computer vision with a scale that weighs the cart at checkout.

Cashierless checkout has been on a tear so far in 2021. The sector has seen new players like Imagr and Nomitri emerge around the world, continued funding such as Standard Cognition’s $150 million fundraise, and big partnerships like the one between AiFi and Wundermart to build out 1,000 autonomous stores.

The big driving force behind all this activity is, of course, the pandemic, as cashierless checkout is a pretty good solution for these COVID times. With no cashiers, it reduces the amount of human-to-human interaction and potential vectors of viral transmission. No checkout lines means that customers are not congregating together as they wait to pay, and customers spend less time inside the store, keeping fewer people inside a store at any given time

Cashierless checkout can also be beneficial to retailers as it provides insight into how customers shop and move about the store, what they pick up (and put back), and real-time inventory management.

Europe in particular is turning into a hotbed of cashierless checkout. Sensei, AiFi, Nomitri, Imagr, Trigo and Supersmart are all operating on the continent. For its part, Sensei told TechCrunch that it will use the new funds to scale up its R&D and launch in new stores.

If you want to learn more about the future of autonomous checkout, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food automation virtual summit on May 18th! We’ll have speakers from both Zippin and Nomitri talking about the state of industry and cashierless checkout technology. Get your ticket today!

7-Eleven Is Adding Drive-Thrus to Its Restaurant Business

Neither dine-in restaurants nor drive-thrus are commonly associated with the name 7-Eleven, but that many not be the case for long. The convenience store chain announced this week that its first-ever Laredo Taco Company restaurant with a drive-thru is open for business in Dallas, Texas. 7-Eleven purchased South Texas chain Laredo Taco in 2018 and has been slowly expanding it in stores since. This is the first time a drive-thru lane has made an appearance at a corporate-owned 7-Eleven store.

7-Eleven purchased the Laredo Taco Company, along with Stripes convenience stores, in 2018 from Sunoco. The restaurant serves up quick-service Mexican food, which customers can order either in the drive-thru lane or for dine-in seating at this new location. Alcoholic beverages are also available for those eating at the restaurant. For those driving thru, the famous 7-Eleven Slurpee is available along with enough specialty beverages to rival a Dunkin’ location.

The restaurant shares space with a new 7-Eleven Evolution Store. As its name suggests, the company’s Evolution stores are a new take on the concept of a convenience mart and a testing ground for the company’s new store formats and technologies, including restaurants. 7-Eleven currently has six of these stores open in the U.S., with three of them being Dallas.

For this newest store, 7-Eleven is also testing its mobile checkout system, where customers skip the cashier line entirely and simply pay for goods on their phones via the 7-Eleven app. Products from the store, including meals from the Laredo Taco Company, are also available for delivery. 

Outside of the Laredo Taco Company restaurants, 7-Eleven has offered delivery from its convenience stores for a few years now. In 2020, the chain expanded those capabilities last year through partnerships with Instacart and DoorDash.

Meanwhile, the lines between QSR, convenience mart, and grocery store continue to overlap. Wawa also has a delivery partnership with DoorDash and has added plant-based meals and other non-convenience-store food to its roster. The concept of the “ghost convenience store,” a delivery-only mashup of a convenience store, grocery, and restaurant, has also become popular in the last year thanks to DoorDash and, across the Atlantic, delivery service Glovo.

7-Eleven will continue building out its delivery, but also has big plans for its Evolution stores. Future stores are slated to open later this year in North Texas and Manassas, Virginia, as well as other yet-to-be-named locations.

Cashierless Checkout Startup Imagr Expanding into Europe, Says Pilots Cost €65,000

New Zealand-based startup, Imagr announced today that it is expanding its cashierless checkout services into Europe and opening an office in Amsterdam, The Netherlands next month.

Imagr is part of a rising cohort of cashierless checkout startups that create more automated retail experiences for shoppers. Imagr’s particular solution uses smart baskets and shopping carts equipped with cameras to recognize items placed inside. The carts tally up everything the shopper keeps and charges the user automatically in conjunction with the Imagr mobile phone app.

Up until now, IMAGR had focused on the Asia-Pacific region, providing its checkout technology to three stores across Aukland, New Zealand and Tokyo and Osaka Japan. According to a press release emailed to The Spoon, Imagr has finalized deals with two European retailers.

In addition to its European expansion news, Imagr provided something we haven’t heard from other cashierless checkout startups: pricing information. Imagr says that full store system pilots of its smart cart solutions start at €65,000 (~$77,600 USD).

Smart carts is its own robust subsector of the burgeoning cashierless checkout market. Smart carts don’t require the physical installation of cameras into the stores themselves. Instead, a retailer swaps out their existing shopping carts for the more high-tech smart carts. Because there is no buildout into the store, smart carts could prove to be appealing to retailers looking to experiment with the technology. Other players in the smart cart space include Caper, Veeve, Tracxpoint, Storewide Active Intelligence, and Amazon.

Cashierless checkout has had a busy year so far in 2021. AiFi partnered with European convenience store chain Wundermart to build out 1,000 stores. And here in the U.S. Standard Cognition raised $150 million for its solution.

With the global pandemic pushing retailers to create more contactless retail experiences, we’re going to see a lot more expansion announcements from cashierless checkout startups around the world.

SuperSmart’s Cart Scale Makes it Standout in Cashierless Checkout

SuperSmart is a chimera in the cashierless checkout world. It combines a number of technologies other cashierless checkout companies use: mobile phone barcode scanning, computer vision for product recognition, weight sensors for increased accuracy. But SuperSmart could easily find traction with retailers because of one product twist that is, well, super smart.

But first, let’s back up. Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, SuperSmart is among a wave of cashierless checkout startups coming to market. While shopping at a SuperSmart-powered store, customers use a special branded mobile app SuperSmart creates for that retailer (or a handheld scanner). As customers shop, they scan the barcode of items they place inside the shopping cart. Once they are done, customers go to a special SuperSmart checkout tower to pay using the app or whatever method the store wants to accept.

The checkout tower has a camera mounted above that uses computer vision to analyze everything inside the cart. The camera compares what it “sees” with what the shopper scanned. But here comes the twist! In addition to the camera above, there is also scale below the cart. The scale weighs the full cart to ensure that the weights of everything inside matches what was scanned.

As a result, SuperSmart enables a double-verification of the shopper’s barcode scanning to prevent loss and theft. The mobile app maintains a tally of everything scanned, the camera validates that with computer vision and the scale adds another layer of authentication by ensuring that the weights match up. If there is a disconnect in that loop, a human store attendant can help make sure all of the items were scanned.

As noted, SuperSmart’s approach combines aspects of a number of different cashierless checkout startups. It uses mobile phones like Nomitri, computer vision like Grabango, and weight sensors like Zippin and Amazon Go. But unlike Nomitri and Grabango, SuperSmart adds the weight sensor. And Zippin and Amazon Go augment computer vision with weight sensors, but those sensors are on store shelves, requiring more installation for the retailer. SuperSmart has consolidated any additional technology installation required to the checkout station.

In addition to cashierless checkout, SuperSmart’s app can also generate upselling opportunities. For instance, if you buy a toothbrush, the app can alert you to a sale on toothpaste.

SuperSmart was founded in 2014 and raised $10 million in funding last month in a round led by German food processing and equipment company Bizerba. SuperSmart’s technology is being piloted right now by the German retail chain, Metro, and Osher Ad supermarkets in Israel.

Amazon Expanding it Palm Pay System to More Amazon Stores in the Seattle Area

Amazon said today via an email to The Spoon that it is bringing its Amazon One pay-with-your-palm biometric identification and payment system to an additional three physical retail locations in the Seattle area.

Launched last September, Amazon One scans a user’s palm for things like gaining entrance to a store or facilitating payment at checkout. Users just need to hold their hand over the Amazon One device and associate their palm print with a credit card and mobile phone number (or an Amazon account, of course).

With this expansion, 12 Amazon retail locations will be using Amazon One including a number of Amazon Gos, Go Grocery, Amazon 4-Star, Amazon Books and Amazon Pop-Ups.

Admittedly, the addition of Amazon One payment to just three of Amazon’s own stores is not earth-shattering news. But it adds to what has already been an incredibly busy year in the cashierless/contactless checkout space. Startups like Nomitri and IMAGR have come out of stealth. Standard Cognition raised $150 million. And AiFi partnered with Wundermart to build a thousand cashierless checkout stores.

Amazon, however, remains the 800-pound gorilla in the cashierless checkout space. It kicked off the movement in earnest with its first Go convenience stores a little more than three years ago. And Amazon is licensing its cashierless checkout tech to other retailers. Airport store chain, Hudson, recently opened its first cashierless store powered by Amazon, with plans to open more. Amazon’s marketing flat-out says the company has big plans for expanding the use of its palm payment to other venues like stadiums, restaurants and more. So it could find its way into more non-Amazon stores in the near future.

We’re also starting to see biometrics implemented in other cashierless checkout systems. Zippin’s latest store in Japan adds a layer of biometric technology from Fujitsu that allows users to scan their palm to gain entrance and facilitate payment.

Of course, it remains to be seen just how willing consumers are handing over their biometric data to Amazon. Knowing what I purchase on a regular basis is one thing. Knowing the fine details of my exact palm print? That’s quite another.

Amazon Opens Up Cashierless Fresh Market in London

Amazon hopped the pond and opened up a new cashierless checkout Fresh market in London today.

The new Fresh location is in Ealing, West London, is 2,500 sq. ft. and will carry 10,000 items. The market will also feature Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which uses cameras, shelf sensors and artificial intelligence to automatically keep track of what people pick up and charge them upon exiting the store.

This Fresh location also marks Amazon’s first brick-and-mortar retail operation outside of the U.S. The company has opened up 10 Fresh markets here in the U.S. as well as 26 of the smaller-format Amazon Go stores in Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Chicago. Amazon also has two of the mid-sized Go Grocery stores in the Seattle area.

It’s been a busy week for Amazon’s cashierless checkout team. On Tuesday, airport store chain Hudson opened up its first unattended retail store using Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology at an airport in Dallas, TX. That store (called Nonstop) is smaller, and the first of many Hudson plans to open.

As we’ve noted before, it’s been an eventful year for the cashierless checkout space around the world. AiFi partnered with Dutch chain, Wundermart, to open a thousand cashierless convenience store. Standard Cognition raised $150 million to scale up its cashierless checkout tech. And new startups like Nomitri and IMAGR are starting to go live.

Amazon is 800-pounds gorilla in the cashierless checkout line, however, so it’s worth watching where the company opens up new locations and who adopts its 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.

Standard Cognition Raises $150M Series C for its Cashierless Checkout

Cashierless checkout startup Standard Cognition announced today that it has raised a $150 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from existing investors CRV, EQT Ventures and TI Platform Management, along with new investors SK Networks and others. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Standard to $236 million.

Standard Cognition creates cashierless checkout experiences for retailers using a system of cameras, computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI). Once installed and integrated with a payment system, customers can walk in, grab what they want, and leave without needing to scan items or wait in a checkout line.

Shopping in seconds with Standard, the world's most advanced autonomous checkout solution

This round of funding is far and away the largest we’ve seen for a cashierless checkout startup. Similar startups that retrofit stores with cameras and AI include Grabango ($32 million), Trigo ($89 million), and Zippin ($12 million). Also worth mentioning is Accel Robotics, which raised $30 million from SoftBank the company, not SoftBank Vision Fund.

In its press announcement, Standard said this new funding will help the company scale up its solution. Standard said it has already been working with customers including Alimentation Couche-Tard, Inc. (parent company of global convenience store brand “Circle K”) and Compass Group. Standard said it will outfit “hundreds” of checkout-free stores this year and has a goal of more than 50,000 stores over the next five years.

It is an understatement to say that it’s been a busy year so far for cashierless checkout. Just today, cashierless startup AiFi announced a partnership with Dutch convenience store chain Wundermart that includes plans to open up 1,000 checkout-free stores. Previously, New Zealand-based IMAGR partnered with Japanese retailer H2O, Berlin-based Nomitri came out of stealth, and Zippin launched a checkout-free store in a hotel in Japan.

A big reason for all this activity (and investment) is the ongoing global pandemic. Retailers are looking for ways to alter the shopping experience in a COVID world, which includes reducing the amount of human-to-human interaction the happen at the store. Removing the cashier removes one vector of transmission, and removing the checkout line altogether means that fewer people congregate inside a store.

In other words, expect to see more cashierless checkout announcements (and investments) in the coming months.

AiFi and Wundermart Partner up for Cashierless Checkout Stores

AiFi is bringing its computer-vision based cashierless checkout technology to Amsterdam-based Wundermart‘s chain of convenience stores worldwide, the two companies announced today.

Wundermart currently operates 70 unattended “grab-and-go” convenience stores throughout Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. These stores are typically between 50 and 200 sq. ft. and located in hotels, offices and transportation hubs. While the stores themselves are unattended by staff, Wundermart shoppers currently need to manually scan each item and make their payment at a self-checkout kiosk.

Through this new partnership, Wundermart will incorporate AiFi’s camera-based checkout system. As shoppers enter a Wundermart store, they will need to scan the store app or swipe their credit card at a kiosk. Once inside, AiFi’s camera+computer vision system will automatically keep track of what people take and then charge them automatically as they leave the store — no product scanning needed.

In addition to its computer vision checkout, Wundermart will be implementing AiFi’s OASIS system, which uses computer vision and sensors to track products in the store for more automated inventory management.

Wundermart will also be integrating AiFi’s technology into its Wunderware SaaS package. Wunderware is sold to third-party retailers so they can create their own autonomous stores. According to today’s press announcement, Wundermart and Wunderware plan to open more than 1,000 locations equipped with AiFi’s technology.

The COVID pandemic is pushing retailers of all sizes to re-evaluate the number of touchpoints they have in their stores. Cashierless checkout provides a more frictionless shopping experience that reduces the amount of human-to-human interaction. Not only does it remove the cashier as a vector of viral transmission, but early data suggests that shoppers using cashierless systems spend less time in a store, so there are fewer people congregating in checkout lines and aisles.

In addition to more frictionless checkout, Wundermart said it will be using AiFi’s system to also learn how people are shopping inside their stores. While the company’s system doesn’t use facial or biometric data to track someone, it can analyze what items people pick up (and put back) to help a store operator determine how to most efficiently set up products.

Only a couple of months in and 2021 has already been a busy year for cashierless checkout. New Zealand-based IMAGR has launched its smart-cart solution with retailer H20 in Japan. German startup, Nomitri came out of stealth with its smartphone-centric, cashierless checkout. And Zippin launched an unattended convenience store at a hotel in Japan.

For its part, AiFi has said previously that it plans to have deployed 330 new and retrofitted autonomous stores by the end of 2021. With the Wundermart partnership, they are certainly on their way to achieving that goal.

Age, Location, Stickiness: Grabango Releases Stats About its Cashierless Checkout

Grabango released some stats this week about how customers have been using its cashierless checkout, including demographics, geographic reach and repeat usage.

Anytime a company releases stats about itself, the numbers should obviously be taken with a grain of salt. After all, Grabango isn’t going to share information that would make the company look bad. However, the entire cashierless checkout space is new, so any data helps us better understand how consumers are reacting to this nascent technology.

Grabango’s dataset is also limited. It’s taken from one GetGo market in Pittsburgh, PA, and only since September 2020 when Grabango launched there.

With all those caveats in mind, let’s take a look at what Grabango found:

  • Initial demographics show acceptance Grabango’s tech across a wide range of age groups. Grabango said 58 percent of users were age 45 or older.
  • People using Grabango also held a wide range of occupations, including “healthcare workers, students, construction workers, retirees, and delivery drivers.”
  • The majority of Grabango users lived within 10 miles of the GetGo location.
  • More than 80 percent of visits are repeat visits, and 45 percent of those are a tenth visit or more.
  • Grabango shoppers spend 1.3 seconds checking out during peak hours, which is 97 percent less time than a shopper not using the app.
  • Refund requests are less than 0.03 percent of total dollar volume, indicating high revenue accuracy.

Again, there are gaps in the data, such as how many people are actually using the app, the percentage of total shoppers at the store using the app, basket size, etc. But seeing the wide range of age adoption and repeat usage should be encouraging to other startups in the cashierless checkout space.

It’s also worth noting the speed of checkout for Grabango’s app users. This correlates with data released today from Zippin about its cashierless checkout deployment in Japan at the Green Leaves Plus store. Zippin found that shoppers there spent an average of just 113 second inside the store.

Total time spent shopping is actually an important metric for cashierless checkout companies and retailers looking to adopt that technology. Not only does it mean increased convenience for consumers (walk in, grab what you want, and leave), but an increased transaction speed means there are fewer people inside the store at a given time. With the pandemic still an issue across the globe, it’s better to not have a lot of people standing in checkout lines or packed together in the aisles.

Cashierless checkout is certainly gaining traction in the early months of 2021. In addition to the stats and news from Grabango and Zippin, IMAGR has launched at three locations across Japan, Berlin-based Nomitri came out of stealth mode, and Kroger started piloting Caper’s smart shopping carts.

We’re going to see a lot more cashierless checkout deployments in the coming months, and more data about if and how shoppers are using it.