These three technology solutions <\/strong>have some similarities but this isn\u2019t a bake-off. In one case, I use the technology solution every week at my local grocery store. In a second case, I recently tried out this store\u2019s shopper technology. In a third case, I\u2019ve never laid my hands on the solution but discussed it with some of the company\u2019s representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The common denominator of the three grocery technology systems is scanning as you go, eliminating the removal of items from the cart for scanning at the checkout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For each of the technology solutions, I provide a brief overview and a rating system of its strengths and weaknesses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \ud83e\udd29 Starstruck by a feature\u2019s beauty Scan It! devices have been used in Giant Foods stores since 2009. As the name and photo imply, these are handheld barcode scanners. The docking station above holds and recharges approximately 30 Scan It! devices locked in place. When a shopper scans their loyalty card, one of the scanners flashes and is unlocked for the shopper to use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By today\u2019s standards, carrying around a scanner in the grocery store is old news. However, with the introduction of the Scan It! docking station and barcode reading checkout stations, this lower-tech solution easily and inexpensively fits into the existing infrastructure of a store. Consequently, Giant always seems to have enough Scan It! devices on-hand to meet shopper demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike built-in shopping cart solutions, the Scan It! devices sit in a small, unobtrusive holder, permitting easy access to the cart. The photo below shows the scanner with my personal \u201ctrolley\u201d bags in the cart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a shopper finishes checking out, they leave the Scan It! device in the store and wheel their cart out to the car. Easy peasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shrinkage is an industry term defined as the loss of inventory due to spoilage, breakage, or theft. To protect against theft, the Scan It! system randomly flags a shopper\u2019s cart for an audit at the checkout. When an audit occurs, a manager puts the Scan It! into a special mode and scans a bunch of items in the cart, verifying it matches what the shopper has scanned. This seems a perfectly reasonable low-tech solution that lets customers know their honesty will be periodically scrutinized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scan It! is a scanner and understands nothing but a barcode. Produce items that are weighed or sold by eaches do not have barcodes. These loose produce items require the shopper to print a barcode sticker from an electronic scale and scan the sticker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m buying three lemons priced at $.79 apiece in the scenario photographed above. The scale displays photos of the commonly purchased items in this part of the produce section. Since there are few operational electronic scales in the store, the lemons I am buying aren\u2019t near the scale and are not pictured. So, I need to search for lemons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stickers on the lemons display their Price lookup (PLU) number which I can enter on the electronic keypad of the scale. Instead, I chose to type \u201cLEM\u201d and then select the picture of the lemons on the touch screen. Then I enter the quantity, print the label, and Scan It!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Scan It! solution is terrible in the produce section. If you\u2019re wondering why it\u2019s necessary to print a label and then scan it instead of scanning a barcode from the scale\u2019s electronic screen, you\u2019re preaching to the choir. Even better, the electronic scale should transmit the information directly to the Scan It! device. If there\u2019s a viable way to avoid printing labels, why not save some trees?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shopper queues up by a bay of self-checkout machines. The line typically moves quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Scan It! device must be placed into checkout mode, producing a barcode screen to scan at the register. Once a shopper commits to checking out, Scan It! prohibits them from purchasing anything else. Consequently, the typical temptations of the checkout station like magazines and candy are absent in the self-checkout bay. I view this as a shopper benefit \ud83e\udd29 whereas supermarket managers may think differently because the store loses out on impulse purchases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scanning the Scan It! checkout barcode at the register begins the process. The shopper may scan paper coupons, choose a payment method, approve the transaction, and take the printed receipt. The environmentalist in me wishes shoppers had the option to receive an electronic receipt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the shopper pre-scans all market basket items, there\u2019s no need to remove anything from the cart. Still, the checkout process invariably represents a final point of delay caused by unaccepted coupons, waiting for a checkout station, an audit, or a payment problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I visited my first Amazon Fresh to take the Amazon Dash Cart for a spin. So not only was I trying out new technology, but I was also trying out a new market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take it from me for those who don\u2019t live in an area chichi enough to support Amazon Fresh. You\u2019re not missing much. Amazon Fresh is a small hybrid of a regular supermarket and a Whole Foods. The one I visited is about half the size of the supermarket and the Whole Foods where I regularly shop. Therefore Amazon Fresh has shelf space for approximately 25% of the Whole Foods items and 25% of the supermarket items. Although I\u2019m not a glass-half-empty type, Amazon Fresh feels like the worst of both the supermarket and Whole Foods worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Dash Cart touchscreen instructs shoppers to enter the PLU code for weighable produce items. As soon as I press the \u201cEnter PLU\u201d button, a camera must have identified my item as a pear because the screen shows a variety of pears. I choose the Organic D\u2019Anjou Pear on the touchscreen and drop the pears into the cart where an integrated scale weighs them. The screen shows the weight and price and asks the shopper to accept the transaction. A frictionless produce experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before leaving home for Amazon Fresh, I used Alexa to create a shopping list and it was simple. Although the Alexa list appears just fine on the Dash Cart screen, letting Amazon know too much about my personal habits gives me the heebie-jeebies. Leave it to Amazon to use its insider knowledge to auto-subscribe me to a monthly tub of hemorrhoid cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aside from shopping lists, the righthand side of the large screen displays recommendations, specials, and coupons. Should Amazon choose to inject some creativity, this large screen expanse might engage and educate shoppers without trying to upsell them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two-shopping-bag-sized Dash Cart resembles a chunky, plastic Fisher-Price shopping cart toy, except for expensive technology. I estimated the cart\u2019s weight at 80 pounds when I tugged one side to make way for another shopper. Even on a smooth floor, the weight of the Dash Cart makes it challenging to flit about the store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I rode my bike to Amazon Fresh and wanted to use my bike bag as my shopping bag in the Dash Cart. My bike bag is too tall and obscures the finicky sensors, which forces me to use a shorter reusable bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The touchscreen integrates nicely into the cart and is easy to use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Dash Carts are heavy because they\u2019re tricked out with scanners, scales, cameras, and a battery unit to power everything. Amazon uses all this technology to keep a hawkish tally of what\u2019s in or out of the cart. For example, if one scans a bag of Oreos, thinks better of it, and quickly removes it from the cart, the Dash Cart may become confused. That is, the cart detects a weight change, but it doesn\u2019t \u201csee\u201d the removed Oreos because it happened too fast. The touchscreen hounds the shopper until the Dash Cart is satisfied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the cart \u201csees\u201d or \u201cfeels\u201d something it can\u2019t identify, it\u2019s on the customer to clear up the confusion. If a shopper places a purse into the cart, the Dash Cart will interrogate them. Ditto if the shopper removes the purse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Dash Cart shrink detection feels tech-smart and user experience-dumb. That is, by thoroughly annoying the customer about any unexplained change detected by the cart\u2019s sensors, Amazon probably protects itself from theft but doesn\u2019t make any human friends in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amazon Dash Cart lanes allow shoppers to walk out of the store without scanning a credit card or paying electronically. This may seem magical to shoppers accustomed to waiting in line, removing the contents of their carts onto the conveyer belt, and having a cashier complete the transaction. Amazon Fresh has a gaggle of employees at the departure point to assist when the Dash Cart complains about reconciliation problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Be aware that Amazon isn\u2019t about to let a penny slip through its rapacious fingers. Amazon can track anyone to the end of the earth to extract their money. Amazon can probably garnish our tax refunds if they have a problem collecting funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each Dash Cart costs between $5,000 and $10,000. Employees guard the front of the store so shoppers cannot take the carts outside. When departing the market, each shopper must carry their bags or remove them from the Dash Cart and place them in a conventional cart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By limiting the size of the Dash Cart, Amazon Fresh avoids the problem of impossibly heavy and bulky bags. Still, it\u2019s easy to buy heavy groceries even in a small cart, and it poses a problem for physically challenged customers or parents with children. In my case, Amazon Fresh didn\u2019t have more than half the items on my Alexa list so my bag was light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I saved the most ambitious solution for last. Cust2Mate<\/a> is an Israel-based child company of publicly-traded A2Z<\/a>. Although Cust2Mate has several active pilots in the United States, none are close enough to my house for a quick jaunt to try out a cart. Instead, some Cust2Mate executives graciously agreed to provide an overview and answer my questions on a call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cust2Mate considers itself a software company. Like any good software company, a Cust2Mate implementation requires integrations with a store\u2019s loyalty and business systems. In this sense, Cust2Mate, which is potentially deployable in Kroger, Food Lion, Wegman\u2019s, et al., differs from store-specific solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cust2Mate\u2019s store agnosticism is what makes their solution so ambitious. It\u2019s much harder to build software with integration hooks than build a point solution for one store. If Cust2Mate succeeds, their audacious strategy will pay off big time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The on-cart produce scale gets a computer vision assist, identifying the vegetable family and allowing the user to refine the selection with touchscreen choices. For example, if one places leaf lettuce on the scale, the computer vision is good enough to recognize that it\u2019s lettuce and presents pictures of each type of lettuce for the user to refine. This is a perfect use for machine vision\u200a\u2014\u200ato assist and streamline human decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cart sports a large Tesla-like touchscreen with plenty of screen real estate. One side of the screen displays purchases and a running total. When a shopper places an item in the cart, the fixed scanner sees it and automatically adds it to the tally. If the shopper changes their mind and removes an item from the cart, the scanner sees it and subtracts it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cust2Mate has a scale in the cart that detects weight changes. As the Cart2Mate executives described, customer mistakes and not dishonesty are more likely causes of unexplained changes in the cart\u2019s weight. Since I haven\u2019t used Cust2Mate, I\u2019ll give them the benefit of the doubt that their benevolent attitude doesn\u2019t translate into a technology-heavy, onerous approach to theft detection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve observed videos of shoppers walking to the side to place items in the cart. It\u2019s faster and easier to lean over the front of the cart and drop an item in, but this isn\u2019t possible with a big piece of hardware in the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Cust2Mate hardware provides two scanners\u200a\u2014\u200aone fixed and one handheld, a calibrated scale, an in-basket uncalibrated fraud-detecting scale, a large monitor, a payment system, coupon acceptance, and a phone charger. This Swiss Army knife approach packs a lot onto the cart and it seems cumbersome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Cust2Mate is foremost a software play, their product will operate just fine as hardware manufacturers introduce more streamlined form factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As one should expect, all its onboard hardware makes Cust2Mate checkout a breeze. The payment system takes credit cards, Apple Pay, or other payment sources the store accepts. The checkout system even provides electronic receipts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the Cust2Mate team designs rugged systems for Israel\u2019s security and law-enforcement forces, these carts are not intended for snow, rain, excessive cold, or extreme heat. Cust2Mate manufactures its carts in small, medium, and large sizes. A full large cart probably contains too much weight and bulk to easily carry all one\u2019s bags from the store to the car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cust2Mate punts on this problem and leaves it to the stores to manage. Some stores may provide a second, traditional cart without the fancy electronics to go from the store to one\u2019s car. Other stores may offer burly young people to carry one\u2019s bags. Another possible solution provides preferred parking areas close to the door where employees shuttle carts back inside as soon as they\u2019re unloaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This problem will disappear when the hardware becomes more streamlined and easily detachable from the cart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sophisticated and expensive cart solutions represent the beginning of the in-store grocery technology arc. It feels like the dawn of the luggable PC and cordless brick phone era. In the early \u201980s, these products were revolutionary, but even then, the designs were widely regarded as impractical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83e\udd22 Queasy from a cumbersome feature
\ud83e\udd2e Blech\u200a\u2014\u200aa rotten feature<\/p>\n\n\n\n1. Scan It!\u200a\u2014\u200aGiant Supermarkets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*TVhAJiF2nqDHI6qVzrZ3xA.jpeg\")
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*CeIO4IiUl1xmjf8P_MylDA.png\")
\ud83e\udd29Portability<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*abKTcnR7TvLiz-EFjI90YQ.jpeg\")
\ud83e\udd29Shrinkage Detection<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\ud83e\udd2eWeighing Produce<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*OkL-sHMJWJA7AYZin6WSeQ.jpeg\")
\ud83e\udd22Checkout<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*0Mbag-CYhIZEVKgNTq2JNg.jpeg\")
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*ON3yT5ZTo9qqPf-Q72yW3g.jpeg\")
2. Amazon Fresh Dash Cart<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*9FmpNwT0BcYWGq0Jvre8og.jpeg\")
\ud83e\udd29 Weighing Produce<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*PlSMY77Z9qeGEg8-LibStg.jpeg\")
\ud83e\udd22 Alexa Integration<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*lC_qcCqr-xlfmP5FVlDBxA.png\")
\ud83e\udd22 Form Factor<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*BgfetpyOeL4XS7UMDywrJA.jpeg\")
\ud83e\udd22Shrinkage Detection<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*oEhwAvDeQ_tQdM7W3KAg_A.jpeg\")
\ud83e\udd22 Checkout<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\ud83e\udd2e Portability<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. Cust2mate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*_a-Rgcg59h1gn1dyhhpmHg.png\")
\ud83e\udd29 Computer Vision<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*jpTD2CN0XpaLes79DSZE7w.jpeg\")
\ud83e\udd29 Customer Experience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\ud83e\udd22 Form Factor<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*cpGQd1Fy1A1P0YfIr7ET3A.jpeg\")
\ud83e\udd29Checkout<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\ud83e\udd2e Portability<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nConcluding Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1260\/1*BCYKSy1YhNOrNW_DmswkkA.jpeg\")