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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cashierless checkout

Giant Eagle Launches Cashierless Checkout Using Grabango’s Tech

Grabango announced today that its cashierless checkout technology is now publicly launched at grocery retailer Giant Eagle’s GetGo Cafe+Market. This is the first commercial launch for Grabango’s technology.

Giant Eagle announced its partnership with Grabango last July, though we didn’t know at that time how the technology would be implemented. The first location to use Grabango will be the GetGo Café+Market in Fox Chapel, which serves the Pittsburgh, PA area. At just 3,000 sq. ft, the GetGo space is smaller than a full-sized grocery store, which is an important detail since the cashierless checkout concept still faces questions around scalability and affordability.

To use the new cashierless checkout, GetGo customers will need to download the Grabango app for iOS or Android and connect it to a payment system (like a credit card). Once all that’s done, customers just enter the store like normal — there’s no check in or special turnstile to scan the phone. Shoppers grab what they want and cameras throughout the store keep track of what is picked up and put back (the system does not use facial recognition). When customers are done, the app generates a special code that is scanned on the way out which automatically applies the charges and sends a receipt.

Grabango is the latest cashierless checkout company to announce a public installation. Last week Mastercard announced a partnership with Accel Robotics for a cashierless checkout solution that will be used at Circle K and Dunkin stores. Zippin recently transformed part of a Azbuka Vkusa grocery store in Moscow into a cashierless experience. And earlier this year Amazon, which pioneered cashierless checkout, opened up its Go Grocery store in Seattle, which features the grab-and-go technology.

With the pandemic still in effect throughout the world, we will likely see more announcements like these in the coming months. Grocery stores have already put measures like plexiglass shields and pay terminal sterilizing in place to help protect customers and cashiers from the virus. Removing the human-to-human checkout process altogether is a natural extension of those protections. With the influx of grocery e-commerce those cashiers could be kept at work picking e-commerce orders and doing customer service.

In today’s press announcement, which was emailed to The Spoon, Grabango said that it has been deploying its checkout systems to “the world’s largest grocery and convenience store chains since early 2019,” so this is definitely not the last we’ve heard from them.

Mastercard Partners with Accel Robotics for Cashierless Checkout Retail

Mastercard. So worldly, so welcome, and now so contact-free. The global payments company today announced its Shop Anywhere and AI Powered Drive Through tools to help retailers create low-touch shopping experiences for consumers.

Mastercard’s ShopAnywhere program is using the AI and computer vision of Accel Robotics to create cashierless checkout for stores. According to the press release, Shop Anywhere can be deployed across a variety of physical formats. Mastercard has already lined up several Shop Anywhere customers including Circle K convenience stores in U.S. and Canada; Delaware North, a global hospitality company that operates at entertainment venues, national parks, resorts and more; and at a Dunkin’ location.

Accel Robotics is based in San Diego and raised $30 million in funding at the end of last year. The company has been relatively quiet compared with its cashierless competitors like Zippin, Grabango and Trigo. But what it lacks in showiness it has made up for with a large partner like Mastercard, which can leverage its massive presence to increase adoption of the Accel’s cashierless tech.

Mastercard’s other initiative, AI Powered Drive Through, is being implemented through partnerships with SoundHound Inc. and Rekor Systems. The program promises to help QSRs “transform their drive through or drive in interactions through vehicle recognition, voice ordering, and artificial intelligence.”

Part of that vehicle recognition technology used by Rekor involves the system knowing your license plate as well as make and model of car. Knowing who you are as you pull into the drive-thru lane means that an order can be rushed out to your car faster or a digital menu could offer up a personalized set of options based on your purchase history. That is, if you don’t mind the privacy implications of a restaurant chain knowing all about the car you drive.

Mastercard’s Drive Through builds on a partnership it had with Sonic Drive-In last year, and will being doing on-location pilots at White Castle locations in October of this year. While it didn’t mention Mastercard, KFC has hinted that it could adopt this type of technology as well.

Of course, Mastercard is announcing both of these initiatives during a global pandemic. As a result, many retailers are looking for ways to reduce human-to-human contact, and the number of touchpoints in stores, including things like touchscreens and even payment terminals where consumers swipe their credit cards. In other words, we’re going to see a lot more announcements similar to this in the coming months as we establish a new normal in a coronavirus world.

Tracxpoint’s Smart Carts Now Rolling Out at N. American Retailers

Remember back in the 90s when Hollywood kept releasing different movies about the same thing at the same time (think: Armageddon/Deep Impact in 1998).

Anyway, right now in the food tech world, everyone seems to be coming out with a smart shopping cart. In just this last month, we’ve covered Veeve, Storewide Active Intelligence (SAI) and Amazon’s Dash Cart (plus there’s Caper). Today, Tracxpoint added itself to the list by announcing its smart carts are now available for retailers in North America.

Tel-Aviv-based Tracxpoint creates a modular platform that can be retrofitted onto existing shopping carts with a combination of computer vision and a barcode scanner to automatically recognize products you put in (and take out) the cart. There is also an on-board touchscreen to display what you’re buying and navigate you around the store. Upon checkout, the shopper is automatically charged.

Tracxpoint isn’t a newcomer to the whole smart shopping cart space, however. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, European retailers, including the Conrad chain in Italy, already use Tracxpoint.

Like, well, everything today, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating new trends in grocery retail, including contactless forms of payments to reduce human-to-human interactions. Hence so many companies rushing into the smart cart space.

Smart carts might be an easier sell for retailers looking to get into cashierless checkout because they don’t require big retrofits or buildouts of the stores themselves. Instead of installing cameras in the ceiling and sensors on the shelves, all of those capabilities can be pushed directly into the cart. And with Tracxpoint and SAI, retailers don’t even need to buy new carts. They just place the tech on their existing ones.

And while this pandemic certainly feels like Armageddon sometimes, smart cart technologies could make a deep impact in the way we grocery shop. [ed. note: Sorry]

SAI’s Smart Cart Tech Can Be Used to Check Up on Checkout Checkers

Smart shopping carts is the phrase of the week, evidently. Indeed, news stories of such carts that power cashierless checkout at grocery are popping up all over The Spoon recently. In just the past week we’ve covered Veeve and Amazon’s brand new Dash Cart, and today we add London-based Storewide Active Intelligence (SAI) to that list.

Like others in the space, SAI’s solution uses an on-board touchscreen as well as camera with computer vision software and artificial intelligence to identify products that shoppers place inside their cart, so the system can automatically charge the shopper when they exit the store. That’s nothing new; the aforementioned Veeve and Amazon do that as well as Caper.

But there are a few ways that SAI is different from the smart cart competition. First, SAI’s system fits on existing shopping carts, so stores don’t need purchase new ones. Som Sinha, Founder and CEO of SAI, told me by phone this week that stores can just swap out existing cart handles with an SAI one.

Additionally, SAI carts are outfitted with patented photovoltaics that continuously charge the cart using either sunlight or indoor lighting. This means that carts can be used round the clock and don’t need to be taken off the floor to charge.

In other ways, however, SAI carts seem to be behind the competition. SAI’s carts don’t include weight sensors, so if you want to add produce, you have to weigh it separately and print out a special sticker for the cart to recognize.

Additionally, the SAI system has only one camera with a fisheye lens, so it is possible that you could trick the system by tucking a pack of gum behind a big cereal box as you placed it in the cart. Sinha said the second-gen version of the cart will feature a second camera.

SAI, which has raised £100,000 (~$125,000 USD) and is mostly bootstrapped, won’t divulge pricing specifics for its cart, but Sinha said that the company has 450 backorders from two retailers in the UK and India. Those backorders, however are moving anytime soon as the pandemic has retailers holding off on completing those orders for the time being.

While SAI carts may not be rolling around store aisles, retailers have found another use for the technology: checking out the checkout aisles to help prevent theft. Sinha said that because the camera’s computer vision is so accurate, retailers have installed them in checkout aisles in multiple stores to ensure that everything going into a shopper’s bag is accounted for.

That seems a little Big Brother-y, but Sinha said that these catching these small infractions can translate into big dollars across all of the transactions a grocery chain does in a day.

SAI and Veeve are similar in that both are looking at employee use cases for their technology. SAI monitors checkout aisles, while Veeve plans on being used by grocery employees to fulfill online customer orders.

While the pandemic may have slowed the implementation of SAI’s carts in-stores, there is long-term opportunity for smart carts and cashierless checkout tech. Going forward, customers and retailers will be hyper aware of all the touch points inside a store, and giving customers a contactless payment option will become table stakes.

There is some debate as to which approach to cashierless checkout is better. There is the smart cart approach, or the one taken by the likes of Trigo, Grabango and Zippin, which outfits the stores themselves with cameras and AI to monitor purchases.

Sinha says that the smart cart approach is better because instead of wasting resources watching over an entire store, retailers can focus on where the actual purchasing decisions are taking place.

It’s still very early in the cashierless space and honestly, there are enough grocery stores globally that the phrase of the future will be opportunity knocking.

Amazon’s New Smart Cart Raises Lots of Questions (Like, Can Its Cashierless Checkout Scale?)

Amazon has taken the cashierless checkout tech that powers the company’s Go stores and shrunk it down to a smart shopping cart to for its large-format grocery store in Woodland Hills, CA. But this Dash Cart, however, raises more questions about the scalability of Amazon’s cashierless checkout technology.

The Verge first reported on Amazon’s Dash Cart, which features a ring of cameras, weight sensors and a touchscreen. The cart keeps track of everything put in there and automatically charges the customer upon leaving. There is even some Alexa integration (duh) to help with grocery lists.

The Dash Cart will debut at Amazon’s first full-sized grocery store location in Woodland Hills. But that store has gone “dark” to focus on fulfilling the record amounts of online grocery shopping happening during the pandemic and is not currently open to the public.

This raises the first question: Why debut this Dash Cart now, during the middle of a pandemic where, as noted, grocery e-commerce is experiencing record sales? Perhaps we’ll see the Dash Cart put to use in other Amazon venues like Whole Foods. Adding a fleet of Dash Carts to existing Whole Foods stores could be cheaper/easier than retrofitting them all with the cameras and sensors needed for store-wide cashierless checkout.

Debuting the Dash Cart now, when everyone’s attention is focused elsewhere, could also help hide some of the new tech’s flaws. As The Verge notes, the Dash Cart can only account for roughly two bags worth of goods, which isn’t a lot, especially at a full-sized grocery store.

UPDATE: Amazon says that they did a lot of customer research and that the cart was intentionally built to accommodate the high percentage of grocery shoppers that shop for two bags of groceries multiple times per week. This behavior seems like it might have been impacted by COVID, but presumably could return once the pandemic recedes.

The bigger question is, why does the Dash Cart exist at all? Does this mean that Amazon’s cashierless checkout tech, which works seamlessly at convenience store size, doesn’t scale up to a full-sized store very well? We’ve seen Amazon implement the technology in its larger Go Grocery store (10,400 sq. ft.), but perhaps that pushes the limits of what its system is currently capable of.

UPDATE: Amazon says that it’s technology can scale to any size store and square footage was not a consideration. The Woodland Hills store was never built around cashierless checkout.

A final question comes to mind: Why didn’t Amazon just purchase one of the existing smart cart companies like Caper or Veeve. Veeve in particular is founded by ex-Amazonians, is located near Amazon HQ, and hasn’t raised a lot of money so it could probably be picked up cheap. Plus, not for nothing, Amazon isn’t always great at hardware (see: Fire phone and its smart oven), getting some outside help might, you know, help.

Having asked all those questions, it would be silly to think Amazon doesn’t have a plan or doesn’t know what it’s doing. This is bound to fit into some larger plan, even if it’s just a stopgap as it works out the issues with scaling its cashierless checkout.

Aramark Uses AWM Tech for Automated Convenience Store in CA Apartment Community

In addition to a fitness center, a dog park, and a rooftop pool (complete with a 16-foot LED screen), the Nineteen01 apartment complex in Santa Ana, CA now has its own automated convenience store.

The QuickEats Close Convenience from Aramark opened yesterday and features cashierless checkout technology from AWM Smart Shelf. The store is open to the general public and to shop. Customers just need to download the QuickEats Close Convenience mobile app, which they scan upon entry. A mix of cameras, computer vision and AI track what is taken and the shopper is charged automatically when they exit the store.

Greenwood & McKenzie, the real estate investment firm that owns Nineteen01, claims in the press announcement that this is the first such automated convenience store in Southern California. Which might technically be true in that QuickEats is a convenience store. However, Swiftly has powered cashierless checkout at Zion Market in Southern California since last year.

While Quick Eats may not truly be the first cashierless store in SoCal, it is the first one we’ve heard of being built as an amenity in an apartment complex. It’s basically offering a corner store that doesn’t require human staffing and is more convenient for residents (especially for residents cocooning in place during the pandemic). It’s easy to imagine other large apartment complexes implementing similar stores as a benefit to attracting and retaining residents.

It’s also worth noting that AWM is powering the automation for Quick Eats. There are a lot of cashierless checkout startups out there (Zippin, Grabango, etc.), so it’s worth watching to see if AWM carves out its own niche with this type of residential retail.

I expect we’ll see a lot more cashierless applications pop up in the coming months as the pandemic continues and people demand more contactless options.

Veeve’s Smart Shopping Cart Is for Both Consumers and Grocery Employees

One question that comes up when you talk about cashierless checkout is, What do you do with all the cashiers that are no longer needed? Veeve, with its smart shopping cart, thinks it may have an answer.

Based in a suburb outside of Seattle, WA, Veeve makes a smart shopping cart tricked out with cameras and sensors that keeps track of of what you place in it and charges you automatically upon exiting the store. The Veeve cart also has a touchscreen that can guide you to items in-store, present recipes and alert you to deals.

Those features aren’t entirely new. Caper also creates a similar type of cashierless checkout shopping cart. What Veeve does a little differently is that in addition to being available for consumer use cases, its shopping carts can also be a tool for store employees (like former cashiers).

I spoke with Veeve Co-Founder and CEO Shariq Siddiqui this week by phone and he explained that Veeve carts can be a way for stores to create their own Instacart-style shoppers. For example, I could place an order using a grocery store’s app. That grocery list is sent to the Veeve cart where an employee can use it to pick out and assemble the order either for curbside pickup or delivery. In addition to retaining employees, the store doesn’t turn a customer (and all of their data) over to a third-party like Instacart.

Siddiqui also outlined a scenario where everyday shoppers could earn a little extra money by picking up groceries for other people. So if I’m going to my local market, I could get someone else’s shopping list on my cart and deliver those groceries on my way back home.

Siddiqui said that Veeve, which raised $2.5 million in seed funding last November, is still finalizing its business model. But because it works with independent grocery stores, it leases its carts out on a monthly, per cart basis that is “cheaper than a cashier.”

Veeve also has a more advertising-forward business model where it takes a cut of any sales generated by recommendations or upsells delivered via the cart’s on-board touchscreen. This could be done either in partnership with the store or with a big CPG brand with lots of products across store aisles.

I asked Siddiqui why a store should go with a smart cart solution rather than a broader in-store installation of cashierless checkout tech. “The ROI doesn’t make sense when retrofitting store,” he said. “The capital expenditure has a 20 year ROI. You’re just not going to do it. Amazon can do it. Walmart can do it. But the average metropolitan market, that is not a realistic proposition for them.”

The question now is whether Veeve’s dual-use smart cart will be enough of a proposition for stores.

AiFi to Launch 330 Autonomous Stores by the End of 2021

AiFi, a cashierless checkout startup, announced today that it will deploy 330 new and retrofitted autonomous stores globally by the end of 2021.

AiFi is perhaps best known for its NanoStore, a fully automated pre-fab pop-up retail experience packed inside a small building akin to a shipping container. AiFi’s Orchestrated Autonomous Store Infrastructure and Services (OASIS) tech platform can also be used to retrofit existing retail spaces with autonomous capabilities, allowing shoppers to simply walk in, grab what they want and leave. The system charges them automatically.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, AiFi’s OASIS technology will be powering 330 new autonomous stores that range anywhere between 800 sq. ft. convenience stores to 10,000 sq. ft. grocery stores. The new stores will be primarily located across the U.S. and Europe, with expansion to other parts of the world planned for the future

The COVID-19 pandemic is still raging across the U.S., which could be accelerating the adoption of autonomous or contactless checkout. Fears over the coronavirus have already caused grocery stores to close down salad and hot bars. Automating checkout would remove the necessity of standing in line with other people, limit cashier exposure to the virus, and obviate the need to interact with a payment terminal that lots of other people have touched throughout the day.

To be sure, eliminating the traditional checkout stand would be a huge undertaking, and large grocery chains aren’t exactly nimble when it comes to implementing new technology. Plus cashierless checkout brings up ethical issues around serving populations that are underbanked. Perhaps, however, AiFi will be taking a page out of Zippin’s playbook and only automating part (like one aisle) of a partner’s store rather than retrofitting the entire building.

We won’t have to wait long to see. AiFi says that it is already powering 10 stores in locations around the world including California, Texas, Amsterdam, Paris and Shanghai. AiFi also has partnerships with Albert Heijn, Carrefour, and others it has yet to announce. If AiFi sticks to its schedule, it will be launching an average of 18 stores per month for the next year and a half.

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.