Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

Post by kjellsbells » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

noodlesUK wrote: post #6

I think that the scan-as-you-shop style systems are definitely the next realistic step for grocery stores. I really like using them, as they allow me to put stuff directly into my bags as I go. I think a further improvement on a system like that would be to use the cheap RFID tech (UHF EPC) so that when you walk through the anti-theft barriers, the system knows exactly what you got, and then there's no need to scan a…

Post by deciplex » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:48 PM UTC

Ajay-p wrote: post #80

I recently finished a book called "The Secret Life of Groceries" by Benjamin Lorr. Amazing book. I learned that grocery and supermarket stores of the past, seemed to have worked very hard to give the best customer experience possible. Today it feels that customer experience has been replaced by cost cutting. Self checkout has been rife with problems, internally and socially, but supermarkets keep pushing them. I can…

Post by deciplex » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

throwway120385 wrote: post #122

jimbob45 wrote: post #27

There was a really neat company called Digimarc[0] a while back that promised to bake the barcode into the packaging such that you could scan any part of the label and receive a barcode successfully. I have no idea what happened to them because it seemed like a slam-dunk idea that would have greatly improved the purchasing process virtually everywhere (and you could just have a traditional fallback barcode in case th…

The problem with that is the same problem with self-checkout and Amazon Dash. It's solving a problem the retailer has -- the cost of employees -- by turning shoppers into store employees. But it doesn't really solve any problems that the shopper has because scanning all of your own stuff and laying it out on the scale is so inconvenient that it ruins everything else. The only place where I've seen self-checkout be as…

Post by michaelt » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:51 PM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #98

michaelt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grocery industry generally has pretty low margins. Wal-Mart's profit margin is 2.39%. If you go into a grocery shop to grab lunch, spending $8 on 4 items, and they make 5 cents of profit per item? They need to run an extremely lean operation. Or target price-insensitive customers, I suppose.

> They need to run an extremely lean operation. they simply need to run a good ordering/inventory system. If they sell every item (on average) in each store every week, that's 2.39% return on the value of the inventory investment each week , or 52*.0239 or over 100% annual return on money they borrow for free because the store pays its grocery bills to suppliers in arrears, net 10 days, etc

Post by Ginobili » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:54 PM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #60

speff wrote: post #3

> Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. That line was unintentionally hilarious to me. Like looking inside a TV and finding a bunch of fast-working little people drawing images.

i've written about this multiple times on HN and always got downvoted I work in the CV industry and this was a very badly kept secret. There is absolutely no financially feasible way to run something like this with current CV