Pretty much the title. Like, get those handheld scanners and attach them to the carts. I scan items as I put them in, roll up to a “register” where the cart is weighed and verified by a cashier. I just hand over the cash then leave. Or even better, install load sensors in the cart.
Usually I like to pack my groceries into my boxes as I get them into the cart. Keeps things orderly and neat and I also don’t buy more than I can carry home. But this means I have to unpack them to place on the belt then pack them all over again after paying. It would be kinda nice to just pay by the cart load.
S Chain in Finland offers this, you have to of course have their customer loyalty card.
But if you want to just use the self-service cashier automats, I think the loyalty card is optional. For scanners though it might be required, I’ve never used those. The self-service cashier points are easy enough for me. 😊
For the scanner you need the card, yes. For the self check out only no
Tesco in the uk does this.
Coincidentally enough this post a few down from yours (on my feed) shows a trial for the second part of your post
I think other large supermarkets do too.
Walmart spent millions on rfid trying to do this. Howevera cart full of razor blades would always not read something so they gave up.
as others have said what you ask for evists - but only where most people are honest enough to not cheat. Where stores don’t trust everyone the cost of verification is more than any savings.
Sam’s Club, owned by Walmart, does this basically.
You scan items with your phone, check out, then walk under this arch camera things to leave, I haven’t been stopped to be manually checked in ages.
Sams club attracts different customers from WalMart and so they don’t have the same crime concerns.
Walmart spent millions on rfid trying to do this. Howevera cart full of razor blades would always not read something so they gave up.
My point was Walmart, Sam’s parent company, spent millions and carried it out in their other store. I don’t know if it’s rfid, but I’m sure their research in it overlapped with the way they implemented it in Sam’s.
Walmart doesn’t even let you do the scan and pay thing with your phone unless you’re a Plus member. Which is fucking stupid. We basically already have a scanner with the ability to pay in our pocket, and they even have systems that let you do exactly what you’re asking about. But then they make you pay extra for it. Like, you’re already trying not pay employees and you expect me to pay you to do what a cashier does? Fuck that and fuck you, Walmart.
Sam’s Club in America you can use their app to scan your stuff and pay. They check your receipt on the way out.
My Sam’s Club has two big arch camera things that scan your items as you walk past. Person at door that normally scans ~3 items and receipt, just waves and says “You’re good to go!”. Been like this for months.
Scan and go is amazing.
The arch is kind of cool but they just had to scan ~3 things manually before so it’s not that game changing. But nice.
We have that in one shop. It started with just a scanner and at the register you’d get random searches. By now the scale is integrated into the cart.
It sucks a bit because with the first system you could quickly scan ten items and throw them into the cart. But now you have to wait a bit after throwing something into the cart for the scale to give the ok.
They don’t weigh at the end because that way you can have your shopping bags or boxes in the cart. That way the cart’s weight at the beginning is registered as 0 and when you’re done shopping you just have to lift your bags directly from the cart into your car. I guess that could be mitigated by having a scale at the entrance of the shop.
But for all the waiting after scanning one item it’s still much nicer than having to load everything from the cart to the register and then back into the cart again.
Already exists and being used, search for “smart shopping carts”
We do in Switzerland.
Not attached to the cart, but you can pick up a scanner at the entrance, scan all your stuff and at the checkout you scan your scanner. No need for the scale at the end, though.
Honor system wouldn’t work in all places unfortunately
At least in Germany, at a lot of Rewes (supermarket chain), this is absolutely a thing and very common. You can place the handheld barcode scanners in a specialised holder on the cart handle and then scan as you go, and neatly package all your stuff before going to the checkout and paying at a terminal. If even Germany has got this by now, then every other country on the planet surely does too lol.
Do they make it easy to put something back if you change your mind?
Yup, you can just edit the amount of items you scanned. Also makes it easier to “scan” an item in bulk.
They dont check the cart weight, instead they just randomly pick out people where they go through their scanned items and check that nothing else is in the cart. I’m being checked about once every 20 times I go.
That all sounds awesome. We definitely don’t have that in NW US yet. Hope we get it eventually.
Our Edeka has a system like that too.
So does Kaufland and Albert in the Czech Republic
These exist, albeit not attached to the trolley (which makes sense).
I do this with my phone at meijer. No need for a device when you’re phone can scan already.
We have that in France too.
If you jump to the 16 minute mark of this video, you can see engineers in the 90s brainstorming the concept of having a scanner built into the cart. The idea has been around for a while.
The whole video is a time capsule in itself.
They had this at Stop & Shop for a while in the US. Don’t know if that’s still how it works though.
