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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cashierless checkout

Zippin and AiFi Announce New Cashierless Checkout Store Locations

It’s not even noon pacific time as I write this and it’s already been a day packed full of cashierless checkout news. Things kicked off when Amazon announced a new full-sized grocery store using its Just Walk Out technology, and that was quickly followed up by Zippin and AiFi talking about newly launched cashierless checkout stores. All of these moves show that momentum for the cashierless checkout space that began earlier this year seems to be continuing unabated.

First let’s start off with Zippin, which said today it has opened up a new autonomous store in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, home of the Brooklyn Nets (the news was first reported by the Sports Business Journal earlier this month). What makes this store a little different from the ones Zippin previously opened in venues like Mile High Stadium and Golden 1 Center is the exclusive partnership with American Express. According to the Zippin blog post, the new store, which will sell an assortment of beverages, snacks and merchandise, is only open to American Express cardholders.

Cashierless checkout stores at sporting events is an alluring concept. The ability to walk into a store, grab what you want and leave without standing in line means you spend less time out of your seat and more time watching the action. With sporting events are just starting to come back, cashierless checkout also provides contactless retail experience. Given all that, it’s cool that AMEX is helping push the technology forward, but it’s a bummer that it’s only available to its cardholders. Such exclusivity reinforces digital divides and only provides the convenience of autonomous retail to the haves, while the have nots can go wait in line with everyone else.

Elsewhere, fellow cashierless checkout startup AiFi announced today that it has partnered with Polish convenience store chain Żabka to launch a cashierless checkout store in Poznan, Poland. AiFi’s announcement is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Amazon in that the autonomous Żabka location will be one of AiFi’s 210 sq. ft. NanoStores. These NanoStores are essentially pre-fab shipping containers that can be shipped and set up just about anywhere. Future AiFi-powered Żabka autonomous stores will be a combination of NanoStores and retrofitted Żabka micro markets.

AiFi has partnerships with 15 store brands internationally, including Choice Market, Carrefour, Loop Neighborhood and Wundermart. Earlier this year, Wundermart said it plans to launch more than a thousand cashierless stores using AiFi’s technology.

While cashierless checkout hasn’t crossed over into the mainstream yet, today’s flurry of activity in the space further illustrates that such a time is not that far away.

Amazon Opening Full-Sized Cashierless Checkout Grocery Store

Amazon announced today that its new Fresh grocery store opening this week in Bellevue, Washington will feature Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology. This is the first implementation of Amazon’s cashierless checkout technology in a full-sized grocery store.

The grand opening for the new Amazon Fresh is Thursday, June 17 at the Bellevue Factoria Mall. To use the new cashierless checkout technology, users scan their Amazon app or their palm (if they’ve signed up for Amazon One payment), or they insert a credit card into a turnstile upon entering. As customers shop, cameras and sensors automatically keep track of what they pick up. When it’s time to go, instead of standing in a checkout line shoppers scan their app, palm or insert their credit card into a turnstile to exit. The Just Walk Out technology tallies up the total and automatically sends the receipt.

Amazon kicked off the whole cashierless checkout movement with the launch of its first Amazon Go store back in January of 2018. Up until now, the technology has only been used in these smaller Go and Go Grocery store formats, and questions had hung over Amazon (and other players in the space) as to how big the system could scale, since most Amazon Go stores are 1,700 – 2,500 sq. feet. This new Fresh Market is 25,000 sq. feet — a significant leap for the technology. As the store size gets bigger, more cameras, sensors and computing power are needed to identify a huge number of SKUs while monitoring the actions of more shoppers.

The cashierless checkout space has been having a banner year in 2021. In the first part of the year, we saw startups emerge, funding news and partnerships formed. As we wrap up Q2, however, we are starting to see more news around larger-scale impelmention of cashierless checkout. Grabango, which has a deal with Giant Eagle, raised $39 million. Israel-based Trigo added German supermarket chain Rewe to its roster of clients. And now Amazon, which licenses out its Just Walk Out technology is in a full-sized store.

Part of the reason for all this activity in the cashierless checkout space is the pandemic, which had retailers looking for ways to reduce the amount of human-to-human interaction. Cashierless checkout reduces the number of staff interacting directly with other people, and keeps customers from congregating in checkout lines. Big supermarket chains, however, don’t move on a dime and need solutions that scale to thousands of stores immediately. We were probably already going to see a number of announcements from big retailers about cashierless checkout this year. But Amazon’s announcement today may accelerate those announcements as supermarkets look to keep Amazon at bay.

Grabango Raises $39M Series B Funding for Cashierless Checkout

Cashierless checkout startup Grabango announced today that it has raised a $39 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Commerce Ventures with participation from Founders Fund, Unilever Ventures, Honeywell Ventures, and WIND Ventures. This brings the total amount of funding raised by the company to $71.2 million.

Grabango retrofits stores with overhead cameras and artificial intelligence to automatically keep track of what customers take and put in their baskets. Users download the Grabango app and shop as they normally would, and when it comes time to checkout, users scan a QR code generated by the app at a Grabango checkout kiosk and get charged automatically.

Cashierless checkout is gaining a ton of momentum in 2021. Startups across the globe are emerging with their own takes on the cashierless checkout space. Grabango, Zippin and Amazon all retrofit stores with cameras to keep track of purchases, while companies like Caper and Veeve use smart shopping carts. In addition to new funding, deals between cashierless checkout companies and retailers are moving from private pilots to public announcements. AiFi is working with Wundermart, for example and Caper’s smart carts are being used by Kroger.

The COVID pandemic accelerated much of the interest in cashierless checkout as retailers are now looking for ways to reduce human-to-human interactions in stores. Cashierless checkout means that one cashier doesn’t become a vector of transmission among many different people, and the technology keeps people from congregating together in lines. This technology is still new however, so even though the pandemic is receding, implementation of these systems, especially by large retailers, will still take time to evaluate and roll out.

Grabango’s system is already in use by Giant Eagle’s GetGo market in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and earlier this year Grabango released some stats on how it was being used. Some findings from that internal survey include:

  • 50 percent of users were 45 or older
  • More than 80 percent of visits were repeat visits
  • Shoppers spent 1.3 seconds checking out during peak hours
  • Refund requests were less than 0.03 percent of total volume, indicating high revenue accuracy

In today’s press announcement, Grabango said that its new funding coincides with additional store deployments with current and new customers in 2021. The company said it has signed five retail partners, including a global top-10 grocer, and multi-store deployments are underway at several of them.

AiFi and Verizon Open up Cashierless Popup Store at the Indianapolis 500

Cashierless checkout startup AiFi announced today that it has partnered with Verizon to open up a cashierless convenience Indy Express Shop NanoStore at the Indianapolis 500 race this weekend. The store will allow ticket holders, staff, drivers, volunteers to buy packaged snacks, beverages and merchandise without needing to stand in a checkout line.

To enter and shop at the NanoStore, users need to download the Indy Express Shop app. Customers scan the app upon entrance and once inside, AiFi’s computer vision and AI trechnology keep track of what items are chosen. When customers exit the store, they are automatically charged for whatever they took.

Cashierless checkout is having a big year so far, and sporting venues could be one of the primary locations we see the technology roll out first. Cashierless checkout stores allow sports or concert attendees to quickly walk in, grab what they want and walk out without needing to stand in a line. This speed allows people to get back to their seat sooner and not miss as much of the action. In a post-pandemic world, this speed also means fewer people are congregating inside a store at any given moment, reducing human-to-human interaction and potential viral transmission.

Rival cashierless checkout startup Zippin has installed cashierless checkout stores at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California, and Mile High Stadium in Denver.

AiFi’s NanoStores are basically self-contained, standalone unattended retail experiences that can be set up almost anywhere. This means that not only can AiFi retrofit existing stores in stadiums (and elsewhere), it can also create cashierless stores for outdoor venues and events, like the one at the Indianapolis 500.

The Indianpolis 500 will happen on Sunday, May 30th, but AiFi’s store is open now during all the preliminary events leading up to the race.

Zippin Adds OurCrowd as an Investor, Launches its Own Equity Crowdfunding Campaign

Cashierless checkout startup Zippin announced today that equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has invested an undisclosed sum as part of Zippin’s ongoing Series B round of funding. Zippin also announced today that it is launching its own equity crowdfunding campaign on the OurCrowd platform, with the aim of raising $8.4 million.

Zippin makes an autonomous checkout solutions that uses cameras, computer vision and shelf sensors to automatically keep track of what people take inside a store. Zippin opened up a store at the Yokohama Tech Tower in Japan earlier this year, and powered cashierless checkout sales at Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado, and Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California.

In a corporate blog post, Zippin Co-Founder and CEO, Krishna Motukuri wrote:

COVID-19 has also caused many people to re-evaluate their everyday shopping habits and start to demand a more frictionless and convenient experience. This makes Zippin the kind of company that a lot of individual people might want to invest in; investing in Zippin is a way of helping to bring about a brighter, customer-friendly future for retail. 

For all of these reasons, I am personally passionate about giving individual investors the chance to be part of the future of checkout-free retail. Ever since the launch of the first Zippin-powered store in San Francisco three years ago, we’ve heard from many people that they love what we are doing and want to support our mission of accelerating the adoption of checkout-free technology.

Equity crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular investment method for a number of food tech startups. BEERMKR, Future Acres, Piestro, Blendid, Kiwibot, Renewal Mill and Miso Robotics have all turned to the crowd to fundraise over the past year. One advantage to equity crowdfunding, as Motukuri pointed out, is opening up investment opportunities to everyday folks. But equity crowdfunding can also alleviate some of the scaling pressure that comes from traditional VC funding, and can also become a marketing an community vehicle for the company running the campaign.

The entire cashierless checkout category has been on fire this year with a number of new partnerships and solutions launching. Now we’ll see if that excitement within the industry translates into cash from the general public.

WalkOut Retrofits Shopping Carts with Cameras and Screens for Cashierless Checkout

For retailers looking to explore cashierless checkout, there are two big models emerging: retrofit the store with cameras and computer vision, or retrofit the shopping carts with smaller versions of that same tech. Tel Aviv, Israel-based WalkOut falls into the latter category. It provides retailers with kits that not only transform existing shopping carts into mobile cashierless checkout stations, but also a personalized advertising and recommendation platform.

WalkOut’s retrofit kit contains cameras and a touchscreen base that install onto existing shopping carts. The system uses computer vision to recognize products placed in the cart. (Bulk items are weighed on a separate scale and a sticker with a barcode is printed out for the system to read.) WalkOut’s system does all the image recognition on the edge and not in the cloud, so there is not a lot of data transfer gobbling up a store’s bandwidth. The cart keeps track of what you put into it and tallies your total when you’re ready to leave. When it comes to checkout, stores can choose from different options such as a traditional cashier or a standalone checkout stand for payment.

In addition to providing cashierless checkout, the touchscreen also acts as an advertising and recommendations platform. The screen can be used to guide people to specials currently offered, or personalized recommendations can be shown if a shopper logs in with a store’s loyalty card.

Like with other cashierless checkout options, WalkOut smart carts can also give retailers insight into inventory levels and how customers shop. WalkOut shows retailers what items people are putting in their carts, a customer’s journey inside a store and analytics on which ads and promotions are effective.

WalkOut is certainly not alone in the smart cart space. This sub-sector of the cashierless checkout market is bustling with activity. Caper, Veeve, Tracxpoint, Storewide Active Intelligence, Imagr, Nomitri, SuperSmart and even Amazon all have smart cart cart solutions available to retailers.

Adopting smart carts can be an appealing proposition for retailers because it allows them to experiment with cashierless checkout without needing to permanently install cameras and sensors inside the store. Grocers can test the new system out with some carts to see how it works before making a decision. Kroger, for instance, began testing smart carts on a limited basis in its hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio at the beginning of this year.

WalkOut is currently in trials with a number of undisclosed European and U.S. retailers. The company was founded three years ago and has raised and undisclosed sum of pre-seed and seed funding.

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.