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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Zippin

Zippin Checks In at JFK With Autonomous Checkout Technology

In a hurry but still hoping to grab a snack before you jump on your flight? If you’re at JFK in New York City, you might be in luck, at least if you’re passing Gate B 42. Because that’s where the airport just teamed up with Zippin, a maker of AI-powered cashierless checkout technology, and SSP America, an airport foodservice operator, to launch a new grab-and-go convenience concept called Camden Food Express.

According to the release sent to The Spoon, here’s how it works: Customers enter the store through a turnstile tapping their credit card as they enter and begin shopping by picking items off shelves. As they do, Zippin’s AI system automatically identifies the items and builds the customer’s virtual cart with the corresponding monetary value. When the customer leaves the store, the total amount spent is automatically charged to the card the customer used to check-in at the store entrance.

For Zippin, its partnership with JFK and SSP is a nice feather in the cap for a company with a portfolio of deployments, including hotels, stadiums, and grocery stores. Zippin’s move into airports follows other cashierless tech platforms like Amazon’s Just Walk Out, which showed up in Dallas airport earlier this year.

The embrace of cashierless tech is part of a broader exploration by airports of food tech. In recent years we’ve seen airports roll out delivery robots, pizza robots, and coffee robots, to name a few, as well as next-generation vending machines. For JFK, the rollout of Camden Food Express follows the October launch of a multi-brand automated retail center created in partnership with Hudson.

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?

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.

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.

Zippin Launches Cashierless Checkout Store in Yokohama Techno Tower Hotel

Zippin announced today the launch of a checkout-free convenience store in the Yokohama Techno Tower Hotel in Japan. It was done in partnership with Fujitsu and the Koyo Group, and Zippin says this is the world’s first cashierless checkout store within a hotel.

The Green Leaves Plus store sells pre-packaged food, drinks and fresh bento boxes. It opened earlier this year as a pilot and is accessible to the public. Customers must first download the Green Leaves Plus mobile app and register their credit card information, after which they can then enter the store with a QR code displayed on the app. Customers can also use the biometric authentication that links palm vein and facial recognition with the mobile app. After this is submitted, users just need to swipe their palm to gain entrance to the store.

Once inside, shoppers just grab what they want and go. Zippin’s combination of cameras and shelf sensors automatically keep track of what people take and automatically charge them upon leaving the store. Zippin said that based on early analytics shoppers are spending an average of just 113 seconds inside the Green Leaves Plus store.

Zippin and Fujitsu announced their partnership back in December of last year. Fujitsu is the exclusive distributor of Zippin’s cashierless checkout system, and adds its biometric authentication layer.

This first Green Leaves Plus store in the Yokohama Techno Tower could be just the beginning for Zippin in Japan. In addition to hotels, the Koyo Group operates convenience stores and restaurants in more than 500 hospitals, and from the press announcement emailed to The Spoon, Green Leaves Plus is part of Koyo’s multiphase expansion plan to create new c-store concepts for hospitals.

Zippin isn’t alone in bringing cashierless checkout to Japan. New Zealand based-IMAGR has partnered with Japanese retailer H2O to install smart shopping carts at three locations across Tokyo and Osaka.

The pandemic has pushed retailers towards cashierless checkout solutions as they look to reduce human-to-human contact. As such, we’ll be seeing a lot more cashierless checkout stores opening around the world.

Fujitsu and Zippin Partner to Push Checkout-Free Solution in Japan

Fujitsu and Zippin announced today at a press conference that they are partnering to sell Zippin’s checkout-free technology solution in Japan. The deal makes Fujitsu the exclusive distributor of Zippin’s services in Japan, and the partnership could include expanded geographies at a later date.

Zippin’s technology uses a combination of shelf sensors, cameras, computer vision and artificial intelligence to create a cashierless checkout experience in physical stores. Once in the store, shoppers can grab what they want, walk out and get charged automatically upon exit. According to the press release sent to The Spoon, Fujitsu may add its own multi-biometric authentication layer to the final product it offers.

The Zippin and Fujitsu partnership comes following a pilot program the two completed with the Lawson convenience store chain in Japan earlier this year. That implementation used a palm reader for user authentication. Fujitsu will start offering Zippin’s technology in March of 2021 .

Interest in cashierless checkout has been accelerating this year as retailers look for ways to minimize human-to-human interaction during the ongoing global pandemic. On its face, cashierless checkout removes the need for shoppers to interact with a human cashier, reducing the amount of labor needed for a store. But the technology can also mean shoppers themselves spend less time inside the store. This means fewer people in the store at any given time.

Fujitsu is the latest giant company to get into the cashierless checkout game. The venture capital arm of chip giant Qualcomm recently invested in AiFi, which makes self-contained cashierless nanostores. And Mastercard has partnered with Accel Robotics to offer cashierless checkout services for customers like Circle K.

We put Zippin on our Food Tech 25 list earlier this year because it was doing interesting implementations including partial cashierless checkout for larger grocery stores. But over the course of the year, Zippin is proving it belongs on our list also because of its international ambitions. The company has a strategic investment from Brazil’s Lojas Americanos that includes deployments at the Ame Go convenience stores. The partial implementation mentioned earlier was at a Russian grocery market in Moscow.

Domestically, Zippin has been carving out a niche for itself at Stadiums, opening up convenience stores at the Golden 1 Arena in Sacramento and more recently at Mile High Stadium in Denver, CO.

Zippin Cashierless Convenience Store Now Open in Mile High Stadium

Back when they were open and operating at full capacity, stadiums were an excellent way to get a glimpse at the future of food tech. The high-volume, high-speed nature of eating at sporting events and monster truck rallies lent itself to things like robots, AI for line management and mobile ordering.

While the pandemic shut stadiums, arenas and civic centers down for most of the year, some, like Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado have re-opened, albeit cautiously. Only 5,000 fans can spread out across Mile High’s 76,125 seats for Broncos games. And though the crowd size may be diminished, that isn’t stopping Mile High from going high-tech with its approach to concessions.

Earlier this, foodservice operator Aramark tapped Zippin to transform the Mile High’s Drink MKT store into a cashierless checkout experience. Zippin’s technology, which includes cameras and shelf sensors as well as computer vision and AI, allow shoppers to tap their credit card as they walk into the store, grab what they want and leave. Upon exit, customers get charged automatically and receive an itemized receipt. The new Drink MKT opened at the end of September this year.

Not only is the Zippin-powered store contactless, Zippin CEO, Krishna Motukuri told me by phone this week that the entire transaction process is faster. Between grabbing what you want, standing in line and checking out with a cashier, the traditional retail transaction can takes minutes. With Zippin cashierless checkout, Motokuri said “We were able to show that most of the customers checked in, picked their stuff walked out in 45 seconds.”

Mile High Stadium is the second sports venue to house a Zippin convenience store. In September of last year the startup opened one in the Golden 1 Center arena in Sacramento.

For its part, Mile High Stadium is no stranger to high-tech concessions. Last year the stadium used a robot to pour out Bud Lights to thirsty fans.

Motukuri told me that his company has seen an influx of interest from stadiums and office buildings as they look to create more contactless retail experiences when they re-open. For example, office buildings want to replace cafeterias with contactless grab-and-go food options. It will face competition there from Amazon, which has also openly explored the idea of putting small Go stores in offices.

How many more stadiums Zippin builds in is dependent upon how soon those buildings open up. The pandemic is still going strong, but there is a potential light at the end of the tunnel with the forthcoming arrival of vaccines. That said, even when the virus recedes, fans will probably still be a little gun shy about congregating in stores for a long time just to grab a Gatorade, so cashierless checkout could be the big winner at the big games.

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.

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.

Exclusive: Zippin Raises $12M Series A, Announces Cashierless “Cube” Store-in-a-Box

Zippin, a startup creating cashierless checkout experiences for retailers, announced today that it has raised a $12 million Series A round of funding led by Evolv Ventures, the venture fund backed by Kraft Heinz. Other investors include SAP.iO, Scrum Ventures, Arca Continental, and Nomura Research Institute and NTT DOCOMO Ventures from Japan.

Zippin is one of many companies looking to retrofit retailers such as supermarkets with technology to facilitate grab-and-go shopping with no checkout lines. Unlike most of its competition, Zippin doesn’t just rely on cameras and AI to keep track of what people pick up (and put back) while shopping. It also employs shelf-sensors for what it says is a more accurate analysis of what people take and keep as they walk out the door.

As part of today’s announcement, Zippin also said that it is making its technology more portable and accessible to retailers with the introduction of the Zippin Cube. The Zippin Cube is a modular, pre-fabricated cashierless store-in-a-box roughly 300 – 500 sq. ft. that can be assembled in under three weeks upon ordering.

The Zippin Cube is what is currently running in the Golden 1 Center Arena in Sacramento, CA. Zippin Co-Founder and CEO, Krishna Motukuri said to me over the phone last week that unlike other “pop-up” style cashierless checkout experiences — like those from AiFi, which use shipping-container-like structures — the Zippin Cube is modular, so it can fit inside odd-shaped real estate and can even include coolers for beverages and other cold items. Additionally, the Cube comes with all the wiring and mounts ready to go, so it’s easy to install the technology.

These pop-ups promise to be a game changer for food retailers. First, it allows them to quickly and affordably extend their brands into new areas relatively inexpensively. Think: a permanent pop-up mini-Kroger or 7-11 in the lobby of an office building or at a music festival. Or, if you wanted to get really nutty, a supermarket could open up a convenience store inside its existing store. This could be a super fast option for customers just needing one or two very basic grab-and-go items like milk or gum or sodas.

As newsy as this fundraise is for Zippin, it’s also worth pointing out Evolv’s decision to lead the round. As noted, Evolv is the venture fund of Kraft Heinz, and it’s easy to see why that CPG giant might be interested in a technology like Zippin’s. The cameras and AI in a cashierless store environment give Kraft Heinz insights closer to the consumer, with the ability to analyze what products are picked up, which ones are put back, and which products are skipped over entirely when people shop.

We’ve seen a flurry of funding activity in the cashierless checkout space in the last quarter of 2019. Accel Robotics raised $30 million last week, Trigo raised $22 million and Caper raised $10 million, each in September. All this funding is another good indicator that 2020 is going to be a transformational year for cashierless checkout.

Today’s funding brings the total amount raised by Zippin to $15 million. The company previously received an undisclosed strategic investment from Brazillian retailer Lojas Americanas, whos Ame Go convenience stores will be powered by Zippin technology. Zippin said today that it will be launching at new stores in the coming months.

(Photo Credit: Sacramento Kings/Golden 1 Center)

Zippin to Open Cashierless Checkout Convenience Store at Golden 1 Center Arena in Sacramento

Zippin announced today that has partnered with Golden 1 Center arena in Sacramento to open up a cashierless checkout convenience store inside that arena next month. The store will be open during Sacramento Kings games and concerts.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the store will offer a variety of drinks and snacks including popcorn and draft beer. Much like other cashierless convenience stores, shoppers will scan the Sacramento Kings + Golden 1 Center app and/or the Zippin app upon entering the store. Once inside, an array of cameras and shelf sensors will keep track of what people grab and keep, and then charge them automatically upon leaving the store. Those who don’t have the app will be able to enter the store by presenting a valid credit or debit card.

We told you yesterday to keep an eye on locations like stadiums and arenas as new frontiers in food tech. So it’s not a huge surprise to see a cashierless convenience store alongside robot fry cooks and Postmates food pickup lines. Stadiums and arenas like Golden 1 Center are all about speed — getting you food quickly so you don’t miss any action (and so you can come back faster to buy even more). Having a store where you can grab what you want and walk out brings both speed, choice and convenience to the arena eating experience.

The entire cashierless checkout space has seen a flurry of activity just this month. Last week, Trigo raised $22 million for its technology, which is already in use at the Shufersal supermarket chain in Israel. And earlier this month, Caper, which moves the cameras and computer vision part of the cashierless equation into smart shopping carts, raised $10 million.

But Zippin has been busy making news of its own, re-launching its own convenience store in downtown San Francisco and, more recently, getting a strategic investment from Brazil’s Lojas Americanas S.A., and powering that chains Ame Go line of convenience stores.

Given the appetite event venues like Golden 1, Mile High Stadium and Dodgers Stadium have for food retail innovation, I fully expect to see more cashierless convenience store openings in the coming months. This is good news for the cashierless startups as well. These stores will be smaller (not full grocery store size), so they will be cheaper to implement and welcomed by fans who don’t want to wait in line. Most importantly, they will expose lots of people to the concept of cashierless checkout.

Everyone at these venues wins. Except for the losing team.

Zippin Gets Investment from Lojas Americanas, Announces Ame Go Cashierless Store

Cashierless checkout startup Zippin announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Lojas Americanas S.A. that includes a strategic investment from the Brazilian retailer as well as exclusive use of Zippin’s technology in its Ame Go convenience store chain.

The first such cashierless Ame Go store has been up and open to the public for the past four months. Up until recently, Trigo Vision had been the only cashierless checkout company to publicly named one of its retail partners in Israel’s Shufersal. In July Grabango announced it was working with the Giant Eagle grocery chain here in the U.S.

Zippin had previously only announced its own cashierless checkout store, which was more of a working lab in San Francisco. Unlike Trigo Vision and Grabango, which rely on cameras, computer vision and artificial intelligence to keep track of what shoppers pick up and eventually purchase, Zippin uses fewer cameras as well as shelf-mounted sensors. According Zippin Founder and CEO Krishna Motukuri, this combination of camera and weight sensing gives his company’s solution greater accuracy than its competitors.

While that claim would undoubtedly be debated amongst his rivals, what Zippin’s technology did deliver was this deal with Lojas Americanas. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, so we don’t know how much Lojas invested in Zippin, but Motukuri told me in a phone interview yesterday that future Ame Go stores powered by Zippin will vary in size between 250 and 3,000 square feet and will be located in high-traffic, mostly urban settings. Customers shopping at these Ame Go stores will use the Ame Digital app to make purchases, similar to the way Amazon Go customers use the Amazon Go app.

Additionally, as part of its deal with Lojas Americanas, Zippin will develop new technologies for Ame Go. While Zippin’s own store and Ame Go have smallish footprints, Motokuri said that Lojas Americanas has larger supermarkets and this deal will allow Zippin to test and scale its technology in bigger formats before going out more widely.

Zippin’s announcement today highlights that even though there is a lot of competition in the cashierless checkout space, there is also a lot of global opportunity. Previously, Motukuri had said that Zippin was working with four “major retailers,” so we expect to hear more announcements from the company soon.