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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Sensei

We Need to Talk About Cashierless Checkout (Again!)

Since we just held a Spoon event this week focused on reducing waste, I thought it appropriate to recycle my headline from earlier this year: We Need to Talk About Cashierless Checkout. I’m not just being lazy, I think we legitimately need to talk about cashierless checkout (again) because so much has happened since the first time I said it — and a lot happened just this week!

Let’s start by reviewing the relevant Spoon headlines since the first time I ran that headline in February:

In the last four months, we’ve written nine cashierless checkout stories, which means that roughly every two weeks, we’re seeing sizeable news in the space. But it’s not just the number of stories. Scratch beneath the surface and some trends emerge.

Funding
There are four funding stories for four companies at different stages, operating in different locations around the world. Based in Portugal, Sensei’s round was a Seed round. Israel’s Trigo got a strategic investment from German grocer REWE. Here in the U.S., Grabango’s haul was a later-stage sizeable Series B. And Zippin, which is based in the U.S. but is powering stores in the U.S., Brazil, Japan and Russia, has turned to equity crowdfunding after previously raising institutional money. I wouldn’t call the cashierless checkout funding environment “frothy” yet, but the sustained level of activity shows that investors are interested in emerging an established solutions.

Different Approaches
Beyond the funding, look at the variety of cashierless checkout startups coming to market. SuperSmart, Imagr and WalkOut all do some type of smart shopping cart. Trigo, Grabango and now Amazon retrofit full-sized grocery stores with cameras and computer vision to achieve frictionless checkout. Zippin and AiFi focus on smaller convenience and pop-up stores. In other words, there is a lid for every pot. Retailers will have a number of cashierless checkout options to choose from that suits them.

Europe
While cashierless checkout spots are opening up across the globe, Europe is becoming a particular hotspot of activity. Imagr opened an office in Amsterdam. Sensei is in Portugal. In addition to its funding, Trigo is launching a store with REWE, and is also a partner/investor in UK-based Tesco. AiFi has partnered with Polish convenience chain, Żabka. AiFi is launching a thousand stores with Dutch retailer Wundermart. And not to be left out, Amazon opened up a location in London.

Sports
This is admittedly a small part of the overall picture, but both Zippin and AiFi launched small convenience stores at sporting venues. Zippin opened its third stadium location, this one at Barclays Center in New York, while AiFi partnered with Verizon to open a small pop-up store at the Indianapolis 500.

As I discussed back in February, there are a couple of main drivers of all this cashierless checkout news. First is the pandemic, which pushed retailers into looking for more contactless retail environments. In addition to removing a human cashier/vector of transmission from the equation, cashierless stores keep customers from congregating in line and reduce the amount of time they spend inside.

Another factor, however, is Amazon, which kicked off the whole cashierless checkout trend with its Go stores three years ago. Since then Amazon has only ratcheted things up with its smart Dash shopping carts and just this week, showed it can scale its cashierless checkout to a full-sized grocery store. Amazon’s constant drive to innovate is forcing other retailers to do the same and accelerate their own cashierless plans.

In other words, we’ll need to talk about cashierless checkout a few more times before the year is over.

More Headlines

InnerPlant Raises $5.65M to Turn Plants Into “Living Sensors” and Mitigate Crop Loss – Agtech company InnerPlant, which is changing plant DNA to create “living sensors” that mitigate crop loss, has raised $5.65 million in pre-seed and seed funding,

Upcycled Food Association Launches Open Enrollment as Upcycling Momentum Grows – This week, the Upcycled Food Association announced that it had opened the doors for anyone who wants to apply for certification.

There’s More to Food Waste Innovation Than Tech, According to ReFED’s Dana Gunders – Dana Gunders, the Managing Director and a founder of ReFED, kicked off The Spoon’s recent event by asking two important questions related to food waste: What is innovation, and what is the problem we’re trying to solve with it?

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!

Here is a List of Cashierless Tech Companies Gunning for Amazon Go

Bloomberg has a story up today about the Portugal-based startup, Sensei, titled “Amazon Go Faces Unlikely Challenge From Checkout-Free Startup.” The headline caught my eye because it isn’t unlikely at all, in fact, it’s quite likely. While Amazon has a substantial headstart in getting cashierless stores to market (10 and counting), Bezos’ behemoth faces all kinds of technological challenges from companies big and small in the checkout-free space.

As a quick refresher, cashierless checkout stores are retail environments that allow the shopper to walk in, grab what they want and leave without standing in a checkout line. Some combination of high-tech sensors and cameras keep track of what you buy and charge you automatically. Different companies have different approaches, some of them more advanced than others, but here’s who’s out there right now:

Caper: Rather than installing cameras and sensors in the store, Caper shifts that technology to its smart shopping carts, so retailers don’t have to spend a lot of money to retrofit their locations. Current versions of the cart require the user to scan items, but they’ve said computer vision is coming to make recording what you put in your cart automatic. Caper has raised $3 million raised and says it is in use by two major unnamed grocery store chains.

DeepMagic: Rather than scaling up, DeepMind scales down to create unattended kiosk shopping experiences that are meant to live inside existing locations (think: Hotel or office lobbies). Even these mini, mini shopping stores will face off against Amazon, as the company is reportedly looking to shrink Go stores to fit inside offices to feed hungry workers. DeepMagic is self-funded and has been used by Cisco to sell swag at one of its conferences.

Grabango: A relative newcomer to the cashierless space, Granbango came out of stealth earlier this year. It uses lots of tiny smartphone camera-sized cameras mounted on the ceiling to saturate its computer vision field and keep track of purchases. Grabango’s hook is that it integrates with the store checkout system, so when shoppers are done, they can still pay with a credit card or cash without a cashier scanning each item. Grabango has raised $17.3 million and says it is in pilots with three major grocers and one convenience store chain.

Microsoft: Microsoft isn’t one to let a cross-town rival like Amazon dominate a market without putting up a fight. But right now we’ve only heard reports of the Redmond giant working on cashierless tech with Walmart (another Amazon rival). Another clue that Microsoft cashierless tech could be forthcoming is its recent partnership with Kroger to pilot a new type of tech-forward, smart stores.

Sam’s Club: The Walmart-owned Sam’s Club opened up an experimental store last year, which requires the use of Walmart’s Scan & Go app to pay for items.

Skip: Similar to Sam’s Club approach, Skip is another small entrant in the cashierless space that is targeting convenience stores. Shoppers download and use the Skip app to scan and purchase items in the store. Skip is currently iN use in several western convenience store chains and has raised $5 million in seed funding.

Standard Cognition: While Standard Cognition has its own working store in San Francisco, it’s mainly there to showcase its cashierless chops. Standard Cognition’s website makes a big deal about it not using facial recognition and being built around privacy. The company has raised $51 million in funding and says it has agreements with four retailers across Asia, North America and Europe.

Trigo Vision: Israel-based Trigo Vision retrofits existing stores with off-the-shelf cameras and computer vision to create its cashierless experience. The company has raised $7 million, is in a pilot with an unnamed European retailer and last November signed a deal with Israel’s Shufersal to implement checkout free shopping across all of that chain’s 272 locations.

V7 (formerly AI Poly): We haven’t covered this company fully here at The Spoon yet. AI Poly recently rebranded its retail efforts as V7, and now uses AI Poly for vision AI for the visually impaired and blind. The V7 website says its AI system can plug into and work with existing security cameras, depending on the number a store operates.

7-11: The convenience store chain’s tech works more like a self-checkout than true grab-and-go retail. In the pilot store the company launched towards the end of last year, shoppers use the 7-11 app to scan items and then manually pay for them at separate checkout stations.

And now we can add Sensei to this list. Are there any others we’re leaving out? Any stealthy ones you want to spill the beans on? If so, drop us a line and let us know!