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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cashierless tech

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.

San Francisco Targets Amazon Go with Cashless Retail Ban, Third Region to Do So

Amazon may have to put the brakes on the aggressive rollout of its automated Amazon Go stores, as more local governments are proposing bans on cashless brick-and-mortar retail operations. San Francisco is considering such a ban, following recent similar moves by other cities and states.

San Francisco’s cashless ban was first proposed back in February, but at that time did not include Amazon Go, because the stores don’t have employees handling cash. This week, however, San Francisco District Five Supervisor Vallie Brown expanded the proposed ban to include Amazon, which operates three Go locations in the city. The proposal comes on the heels of New Jersey’s cashless retail ban earlier this week, and Philadelphia’s earlier this month. New York City is considering such a ban as well.

Amazon Go locations are small, bodega-sized stores that have no cashiers. You scan the Amazon Prime app on your phone as you enter the store and high-tech sensors and cameras keep track of everything you take, automatically charging your credit card as you leave.

As my colleague, Jenn Marston has written, “Those who are against cashless businesses argue that restaurants and stores only accepting those payment forms exclude poorer communities and those for whom credit cards might not be an option.” Stores that have implemented cashless operations say they are safer (nothing to rob) and more accurate bookkeeping.

Amazon, however, is probably less concerned with safety and accuracy in its Go stores than it is with shopping efficiency (FWIW, we recognize the societal implications of cashless retail, and we loved shopping at Go). Amazon is all about removing friction from the retail experience, so you buy more stuff from them.

Amazon’s cashless troubles are compounded by the fact that the company is facing a broader backlash after its much-maligned second HQ search, and has become one of the targets of a larger anti-tech sentiment, with presidential candidates calling for its breakup.

This anti-Amazon sentiment gives the company less leverage in any fights it wants to pick with cities to keep the Go train rolling. Amazon had reportedly threatened to pull out of its Philadelphia location over accepting cash, which didn’t stop the city from enacting the ban anyway.

So what will Amazon do if more cities decide to ban cashless retail? The company can’t pull out of every city, and dense urban environments are where Go stores work best. But it’s hard to imagine the company going back and curtailing its AI and computer vision work it’s put into Go as it really is a great retail experience, and there’s too much data to be had watching us shop.

Amazon is laying some groundwork for Go experiences outside of cities. The company is looking at shrinking the already small Go stores to fit inside office buildings. Going more private like that could help it sidestep anti-cashless regulation.

But if the anti-cashless trend catches on, how long before Amazon Go is gone?

Grabango Raises $12M for its Scalable Cashierless Tech

It was just about a year ago when Amazon opened its first cashierless Amazon Go store in Seattle. Throughout 2018, others were quick to follow as players like Microsoft, Standard Cognition, Sam’s Club, Deep Mind, AI Poly, 7-11 and Trigo Vision all started developing and rolling out their own versions of cashierless checkout retail experiences.

All this is to say that while the cashierless checkout space is pretty crowded, another entrant, Grabango (pronounced GraBANGo), yesterday announced it had raised a $12 million Series A round to roll out its take on cashierless tech. The round was led by Propel Ventures, and brings Grabango’s total amount raised to $18 million.

Like Standard Cognition and Trigo Vision, Grabango builds cashierless systems for third parties — retailers that want to implement such systems without building them in-house. I spoke with Grabango CEO, Will Glaser, who said that his company’s technology differs from the competition in a few ways.

First, it uses small, smartphone-like cameras and sensors. Mounted to the ceiling, these vision systems are not so high-def that they can read barcodes, but are, according to Glaser, the equivalent of a person looking across a room. They can tell the difference between a can of Coke and a can of Diet Coke. There are a lot of these cameras installed, so much so, that every item on a shelf has 200 percent coverage. If one fails, there’s another watching.

Glaser said the algorithms powering their AI and computer vision TECH are smart enough to detect and work through elemental changes such as lighting conditions, as well as branding changes (like when Coke releases its holiday packaging) in real time.

Glaser also says that Grabango’s system already works at scale. It can be retrofitted into an existing retailer as large as 100,000 square feet of space with hundreds of simultaneous shoppers.

Finally, Grabango handles checkout in two different ways. If you download and install the Grabango app you can literally “grab-n-go,” placing all your items in a bag and walking out. The mobile app will then charge you accordingly. Or, you can also gather all your items and go to a checkout stand and pay however you want with cash, credit, Apple Pay, etc. (even with SNAP benefits). The system knows when you — and all the stuff you’re buying — are at the checkout stand, provides the total so all you have to do is pay the cashier.

It may seem counterintuitive for a cashierless checkout company to offer a checkout option, but Glaser said that Grabango’s system eliminates the most time-consuming part of the checkout process — taking items out of your cart and manually scanning them — so you can just pay.

According to him, the company is already in pilots with three major grocers and one convenience store chain in the U.S., though he wouldn’t provide any further details. Grabango is a SaaS business and charges retailers a monthly subscription fee.

One aspect of Grabango’s technology that the company isn’t as focused on right now is the real-time information it can provide to retailers. Who needs a shelf-scanning robot slowly going up and down aisles, when the ceiling mounted cameras can tell in real time what items are low? There also seem to be opportunities for real-time mapping of stores to make online order fulfillment by human workers faster and more efficient.

Between Amazon Go’s aggressive rollout and the number of startups working on the issue, cashierless tech in the real world is poised to accelerate this year.

All_EBT Allows Those Underbanked to Participate in (Some) Cashless Retail

The number of Amazon Go stores are set to explode over the coming years, and while the grab-and-go convenience stores are a marvel of modern technology, they also raise thorny ethical issues surrounding cashless retail. You can only use Amazon Go if you have an Amazon account, and to get an Amazon account you need a credit or debit card — something lower-income populations may not have access to.

New York City councilmember Ritchie J. Torres is so concerned about the rise of these automated retail environments that he introduced legislation last month requiring restaurants and stores to accept cash or pay a fine. In an interview with Grub Street, Torres said: “On the surface, cashlessness seems benign, but when you reflect on it, the insidious racism that underlies a cashless business model becomes clear.” He continued “If you’re intent on a cashless business model, it will have the effect of excluding lower-income communities of color from what should be an open and free market.”

But there is a startup working on a way for lower-income and underbanked people to participate in the cashless revolution. All_ebt uses a combination of Facebook Messenger and virtual Visa cards to allow those on SNAP assistance (food stamps) to shop for USDA-approved groceries online. I confirmed with All_ebt Co-Founder, Eli Calderón Morin, that by extension, All_ebt users can also shop at cashless stores like Amazon Go. In an email to me, Morin wrote:

Yes the All_ebt card in our controlled environment and under the existing USDA restrictions does allow people to shop in store at place like Amazon Go in addition to other retailers like Costco, and Walmart.

The two options available for users are:

  1. adding your All_ebt virtual card to your Apple Pay and or Google Pay
  2. users can request a physical card and use anywhere Visa transactions are accepted

All_ebt has it’s own physical retail locations (which are primarily to help people sign up for the service) and even has ambitions to build it’s own Amazon Go-like experience — but that is still a ways off.

All_ebt can’t solve all of the issues associated with the cashless movement. There are still issues surrounding access to restaurants and coffee shops that abandon greenbacks, as those may not be applicable for SNAP purchases. But for now All_ebt is providing a way for more people to participate in the cashless grocery retail revolution as Amazon Go and more competitors expand into more markets next year.

Sam’s Club to Open Cashierless Concept Store Next Week

Walmart-owned Sam’s Club will open up a new store in Dallas next week that will feature a high-tech take on grocery shopping with cashierless checkout, in-store search and augmented reality. The move will also escalate Walmart’s innovation battle with rival Amazon and its cashierless Go stores.

Dubbed Sam’s Club Now, the new store concept will feature the company’s Scan & Go payment technology. Members who shop at Sam’s Club Now will now be required to use the Scan & Go app to scan and pay for items and serve as the foundation for other features such as:

  • Smart shopping lists. Using machine learning and purchase data, Sam’s Club Now will automatically generate a shopping list for users and automatically update it as items are purchased.
  • In-store navigation. Search for an item and the app will navigate you to its location in the store. Eventually, the app will create an optimal route for shoppers based on their smart shopping list.
  • Augmented Reality. This doesn’t seem to be fully baked yet, but from the company’s corporate blog post: “We’ll bring items to life in the club by sharing new ways to use them, and we’ll work to integrate stories that highlight cool features, including how items are sourced. We also have plans to use augmented reality to transform members’ digital carts into pirate ships. Or maybe you’d prefer a rocket? More on that soon!”

The use of Scan & Go will also mean a new role for us humans. Sam’s Club is creating a new position called the Member Host, which the company wants you to think of like a “concierge of the club.” Instead of just ringing customers up, they will help guide and inform shoppers. This is actually a common theme among companies implementing automation. From Cafe X’s robot barista to Walmart’s shelfbot, the repetitive tasks are taken over by apps or robots and humans are kept around to provide service, expertise and perform higher level tasks.

The launch of this newfangled Sam’s Club Now is a shot across the bow of Amazon, which has been rolling out its Amazon Go stores at a rapid clip, recently, opening up three locations in Seattle, two in Chicago and one in San Francisco (with more to come).

Sam’s Club Now and Amazon Go aren’t exactly analogous to one another. Go stores don’t require any manual scanning, instead relying on banks of cameras and sensors to know what you purchased. And the two stores are going after different markets. Sam’s Club Now takes up 32,000 square feet and is more of a full grocery shopping experience as opposed to smaller, more convenience-like Go stores, which typically hover at around ~2,000 square feet and are meant for grabbing things quickly.

However, they are both pushing a technology-driven change in the way we shop for our food. Between the advancements these two giants are making, as well as the work of startups like Trigo Vision and AIpoly, among others, 2019 is shaping up to be a watershed year for the cashierless retail revolution.