Amazon is Opening a Supermarket With No Cashiers. Is Whole Foods Next? (vox.com) 138
Two years ago, Amazon introduced the idea of high-tech, cashierless shopping with a store that was a cross between a 7-Eleven and a Pret A Manger sandwich shop. Now, Amazon is bringing the same concept to its full-size supermarket. On Tuesday, Amazon will open the doors to a 10,000-square-foot Amazon Go Grocery store in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, less than a mile from the tech giant's downtown Seattle headquarters. From a report: It'll be stocked with 5,000 different products -- from organic fruit to grass-fed beef -- and outfitted with cameras, sensors, and computer vision that eliminate the need for shoppers to fork over cash or plastic before walking out the door with their groceries. The new store, which is the first of its kind in the US, highlights Amazon's unsated appetite for gobbling up market share in the $900 billion US grocery industry, even after spending nearly $14 billion in 2017 to acquire Whole Foods and making same-day grocery delivery a free perk for Prime members last year. At the same time, the expansion of the cashierless store concept raises the question of when -- not if -- the technology will be ready for installation in Whole Foods stores, and what might happen to the chain's thousands of cashiers when it is.
So, do the prices reflect this? (Score:2)
If I'm going to have to do all my own bagging and ringing-up, I'd damned well better be compensated for it.
Yes, that sounds entitled, but in all honesty, if I can get that courtesy elsewhere for the same price, I'll go get that courtesy elsewhere.
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Robots don't pay taxes, either.
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The people who make and maintain the robots receive wages and pay taxes.
In the same sense that robots "don't pay taxes", excavators and jackhammers "don't pay taxes". Are you suggesting that we should stop using excavators and jackhammers and instead rely on ditchdiggers with shovels and sledgehammers? Come to think of it, shovels and sledgehammers "don't pay taxes" so perhaps we should make the ditchdiggers dig trenches and break rock with their bare hands.
The notion of having a manned checkstand at a stor
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The people that constructed you and I paid wages.
The cashiers and others that these "robots" replaced payed wages, as did those that managed them.
You don't like "quaint"? Read Vonnegut's Welcome To The Monkeyhouse". It's one of many tomes that can tell you the long-tail of automation.
I'm not a Luddite, but I'm fully aware at the plutocracy we now enjoy, and at the top of that ladder, the richest man in the world.
Get real.
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Perhaps at some point groups of people will choose to eschew technology and establish and live on self supporting communes with no outside resources. Or, they may decide to boycott businesses like Amazon or others that use technology to replace human workers.
This has little to do with plutocracy, it has to do with consumers (as they pretty much always have) seeking the least expensive and most convenient source of goods and services. Yes, a few large efficient organizations tend to dominate markets and less
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Communities make a least-common-denominator, and communes are more insular.
There is dignity in work, and dignity is a human basic (despite those that would spend it). That's not a Wesleyan attitude, rather, people like to be useful and contribute, generally. We know the exceptions.
To pay for services provided by heavily automation-produced goods and services, they in turn, must have a source of income. A basic universal income idea is now in experiments. This UBI doesn't also have common-good-taxes. Like it
Why it's different THIS time (Score:2)
In the same sense that robots "don't pay taxes", excavators and jackhammers "don't pay taxes". Are you suggesting that we should stop using excavators and jackhammers and instead rely on ditchdiggers with shovels and sledgehammers?
They key difference here being that those tools were made to make men more productive in their work. The jackhammer didn't replace the man wielding the shovel. It was just a newer, better tool. That's why this isn't just new tools, it's a revolution, because the point of automation is not to make people better workers, but to replace them outright. The end goal is no more humans doing these jobs. And no one has found a way to replace those jobs. Unlike past eras, where new tech created as many jobs as it at
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The excavator (originally a "steam shovel") certainly has replaced most ditch diggers. Ditch diggers needed no education, minimal intellectual capabilities, and very little training. An excavator operator in a $300K+ machine is a much more skilled job with much higher responsibility and education, training, and intellectual requirements. Jackhammers are often now an attachment on a general purpose excavator for any serious work rather than something wrestled into position by a person's muscles.
In the case o
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Supposedly it will lower the pricing. You spend approx. 10 minutes in front of a cashier, that is ~$5 in wages, benefits etc every time you go shopping. The cashier station costs a few thousands as well. You'll also have more throughput so your stores can be smaller.
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Supposedly it will lower the pricing..
Hahahahaha... You don't know corporate America, do you? Prices will go up to "recover the cost of the scanners" and the profits will go to buy a new yacht for the CEO.
Re: So, do the prices reflect this? (Score:2)
In corporate America, grocery stores run on a razor thin margin to compete on price. Any cost saving will be used to eke out the competition.
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And think of the ecological benefits of having smaller stores with fewer employees. Less energy to heat/cool, less energy to build, way less energy consumed by employee treking to/from the store to serve their shifts. Even slightly less energy for customers to access as smaller retail outlets allows them to be more tightly packed.
The Green New Deal should include banning all human work that can be done, full-lifecycle, with a smaller carbon footprint using automation.
Wont' someone think of the planet?
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You're already doing that if you're shopping at the grocery store a block away from this new Amazon construction.
Welcome to 21st-century Seattle.
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As wages rise, at least for some, and pressure to lower prices is always major, the eficiencias increase. The problem we have now is that we still need to scan and pay, which I always have trouble as this is not my job and the payment machine never seems to work.
The nice thing about the amazon store is that you picked and are charged on e it, so the
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If I am going to have to pick my own fruit and vegetables I better be compensated for it. I want a dedicated server behind the counter to hand me my product.
Prior to the 1880s, this is how shopping actually worked. You went to the counter at the front of the shop, handed your list to a clerk, who then went into the storeroom to pick your items off the shelf.
Woolworths was the first shop to allow customers into the "store" to pick their own items.
So the Luddites objecting to scanning and bagging their items should also object to having to pick them from the shelves.
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Prior to the 1880s, this is how shopping actually worked. You went to the counter at the front of the shop, handed your list to a clerk, who then went into the storeroom to pick your items off the shelf. Woolworths was the first shop to allow customers into the "store" to pick their own items.
That's what I had to do at liquor stores here in Norway in the late 90s, letting us browse the merchandise could entice us to buy more. Two year trial started in 1999, ten years after that every liquor store in the country had switched to self picking. Good riddance. You still can't buy anything through self service though not even beer at a regular store, because the law says you can't sell beer to a visibly intoxicated person and no id scanner/fingerprint reader can verify that you're sober enough. So the
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You must be going to different markets than I do. When available, I always use self-checkout and have very few problems. Although, at one chain store, I can't possibly figure out how it can take so long for the system to actually decide that "Yes, you did scan the bananas that are on the scale, I've displayed the weight -- now if only the poor computer
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If I am going to have to pick my own fruit and vegetables I better be compensated for it. I want a dedicated server behind the counter to hand me my product.
Where the hell do you shop where a clerk hands you fruits and vegetables?
“Tops on or off?” (Carrots)
FWIW I shop at a fruit and vegetable warehouse that is also open to the public. Everything is at least 3 days fresher, and kept in ideal conditions (take a warm jacket!) You sign a waiver and they give you surgical gloves. There are no prices. You review the prices at checkout, and they will cheerfully return anything that gives you nosebleed (that exotic Japanese melon. That pound of vanilla bean
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I only self-checkout if I have a few items. If my cart is loaded, I much prefer a human. And I actually enjoy chatting with the clerk (not enough to hold up the line, mind you). They're not all "chowderheads" believe it or not.
Guy Fawkes mask (Score:2)
This /. post should use the Guy Fawkes mask icon.
The shoppers in that store should all wear that while shopping.
Then shuffle some carts around between them.
Let's see how the good their computer vision system is.
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The shoppers in that store should all wear that while shopping. Then shuffle some carts around between them.
So two people go into that store.
The first person puts some expensive stuff their cart. The second one puts in some cheap stuff.
Then they switch carts.
The second person walks out and pays the price for the cheap stuff . . . although the cart has expensive stuff.
The second one walks out but makes a fuss about the expensive bill for the cheap stuff, and also just pays for the cheap stuff.
But the folks at Amazon have probably already thought of that trick.
Although, you should never underestimate the ing
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Re:Guy Fawkes mask (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in Amazon's physical security, when the first Go store opened a block from our office three of my co-irkers decided to game the system. They tried almost every day for two weeks, working individually or as a group, and never got any free stuff and never got overcharged. I was honestly impressed.
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There's a current article on one of the on-line tech mags.
The writer was able to defeat the system and steal produce by putting on sunglasses and a sweater change in the bathroom. After that, nothing he picked up got charged.
He included a photo of the receipt showing a two and a half hour shop time (actual was half an hour).
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It's all fun and games until Hallowe'en happens...
A brief interlude to the Two Minute Hate (Score:2, Funny)
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Brother, our operation to ensure that all citizens must carry, at all times, an approved Telescreen (whose euphemism, so-called "smart" so-called "telephones" we have successfully integrated into Newspeak), is proceeding apace. Soon, no citizen will dare venture from their bed with anything like a mere "flip-phone" or -- MinTruth forbid! -- without a Telescreen at all.
Based on your subject line ... I thought you were going to give us some respite from the two-minutes hates of Amazon, but apparently no.
Same day for Prime, wtf? (Score:2)
I'd never heard of the "same day groceries" for Prime members mentioned in the summary, so did some checking. No idea where that comes from, it certainly isn't available to me as a prime member. Maybe only in select markets?
The best they do is "next day" delivery on a few items.
For the things I normally buy, they only offer 2-day delivery at about twice what my local grocery store charges. So groceries from Amazon aren't a realistic option for me. Not sure what other Prime customers experience is.
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It is called "Prime Now". primenow.amazon.com. I've never used it, but they say free 2-hour delivery.
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It is only in select markets, typically near their distribution facilities.
Hahahahahaha!
“Distribution facilities” = nearest Whole Foods. In “select markets”. (Which, unfortunately, I am in).
They turned the in-house fast food restaurant of mine (no big loss) into a “distribution center” (blocking the streets of a neighborhood retail district).
I loved how one day the parking cops ticketed a whole row of illegally-parked delivery drivers and I lauuuuuuuughed!! Easy pickings!
From Organic Fruit to Grass Fed Beef! (Score:4, Funny)
Wow holy moley!
How much for asparagus water?
Thank you, Amazon! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the sudden flood of entertainment & convenience has completely overwhelmed most people's ability to thing rationally. I have no other way to explain what's going with Americans today.
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I don't get it. It is still a store. The grocery chains are all owned by mega-corporations (in the US many are foreign owned). What is the difference if that mega-corporation is Amazon (750,000), or Ahold Delhaize (who probably owns your local grocery and has 372,000 employees).
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Sure they do. Walmart. Target. Costco. Sams Club. They all have grocery stores in their stores, along with all the other junk. Welcome to America.
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You're 100% correct, but I want to point out that it doesn't have to be the case if individuals made good choices (shop local, use cash), but people don't.
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Yes, trying to do the correct things is unfashionable, after all.
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Wealth has grown and has spread to more people than ever before... If you actually examine the figures in the U.S. the real median income is at historical highs and the middle class is only shrinking because the members are transitioning into the upper class. .
citation please.
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If the value of labor truly becomes zero then there's very little cost to providing everyone with a very high standard of living. The only reason we can't have that now is that there isn't enough labor to possibly produce as much as everyone needs to live at that level [libertarian snark snipped]
Only on Star Trek, on Earth we're limited by energy and raw materials. An arbitrarily huge labor force of former cashiers or coal miners or goat herders working for infinitesimally tiny wages can't make solar cells cheap enough for them all to buy enough to power a western lifestyle.
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It's the same type of problem with depending on another country to make all your base products, which we may soon see that problem first hand if CoronaVirus continues to cause problems for China.
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Does nobody see a problem with have ONE retailer?
Wall Street doesn't. And what's good for Wall Street is good for America! What are you, a socialist?
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Convenience for the snowflake generation who think inconvenient is having to talk to at actual human at a till for 30 seconds.
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Re: Thank you, Amazon! (Score:2)
Or maybe boomers and gen x havent been suckered into doing the stores job for them by checking out their own goods. Only dumb millenials think that's a good deal when there's no price reduction. And nice try on making human interaction sound weird aspie boy. You're the freak, not us
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Or maybe boomers and gen x havent been suckered into doing the stores job for them by checking out their own goods.
What the hell is "store's job"? Does it include folding toilet paper and providing a map so that boomers can find their asshole? Self-checkouts are actually faster and more convenient than clerks. And Go stores are doubly so.
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"Self-checkouts are actually faster and more convenient than clerks. "
Yeah, right. Tell you what sonny, when your balls have dropped and you do your own shopping for a family instead of mummy buying you everything you might understand.
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Jesus, you are a grade A assclown. Good luck getting a toddler to use a self checkout.
Grow the fuck up and get a clue.
PetNet for People. (Score:2)
Not the worst thing (Score:2)
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I'm often depressed at these news stories that bemoan the loss of jobs in the face of technological improvement.
America is suffering from a labor shortage. We need to move people out of low wage dead-end jobs in retail, and into more productive jobs so businesses can expand and the economy can grow.
What should depress you is seeing a cashier repetitively scanning and bagging products. It is pathetic that a human mind is wasted on such drudgery.
10000 square feet? (Score:2)
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And the average supermarket has 40,000 to 50,000 SKUs (stock keeping units), not 5,000
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10,000 square feet will probably make it the largest retail space on Capital Hill, some of the most overpriced real estate in the Puget Sound area. They must be expecting a massive amount of traffic through that store to support the rent.
We noticed you looked Widget Flakes but didnt buy (Score:2)
Hello Mr Jones, on Saturday at 2:34pm you shopped at Amazon Grocer and you looked at Widget Flakes for 1.26 seconds. For completing this short survey we on behalf of Widget Flakes would send you a 50% off coupon...
At ALDI, not at Whole Foods (Score:2)
ALDI already has the minimum staffing required for a functioning store. Having a customer-employee interaction at one is rare, aside from the standard pleasantries at the che
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Yes, I know ALDI is owned by a completely different company (which also owns Trader Joe's)
Aldi is owned by two different companies. One of them owns Aldi stores in the US. The other one owns Trader Joe's. They originally split over the decision on whether to sell cigarettes.
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How do they prevent me... (Score:2)
...walking in, filling my bag with stuff, walking out?
Presumably there's security but how will they know you've paid or not if its all done by RFID tag and bluetooth? Does an alarm go off if goods the system thinks haven't been paid for are taken past a barrier?
This is a genuine question having never seen one of these places.
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Actually, what happens is a little blue robot in questionably appropriate lingerie come dashing madly towards you waving its little appendages and in your mother's voice says: put that back before anyone notices. You didn't think your personal data on your mother was going to waste, did you?
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...walking in, filling my bag with stuff, walking out?
That's pretty much how it is supposed to work. Haven't tried it, but from inspection of the other store they have on First Hill, it is all done by your phone app which presumably has a credit card registered with your account. Entrance is gated, so you can't even get in, let alone out if you don't have the app installed on your phone and it finds no issue with what you ware doing. The gates are those RFID type things they have at other stores but instead of just an alarm, they actually control a gate that a
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I think the question is more of a "How does it know who to charge?" I assume facial recognition and cameras around the store. If the face is obscured, it uses other biometrics (body shape, coloring, etc.).
Re: How do they prevent me... (Score:2)
Are you really this dumb or do you have to practice at it?
Automation goals (Score:2)
Instead it is used to free up capitalists from paying workers.
Those workers are indeed left with more free time, but no way to effectively use it in a society that has left the value of their labor behind and discarded the laborers with it.
This is a major societal issue. You can blather about new jobs and unimagined industries being created, but even if they are at the same rate (they are
Supermarkets around here are already that way (Score:3)
The architects have set up twenty checkout lanes, but at most two are actually personed. They want people to get used to using the self-checkout, so let's focus on making self-checkout easier to use. Put the two remaining employees to work weighing and coding purchases in the produce and bakery departments. Setting it up so that you can push coupons through a slot would eliminate an employee callout to scan coupons. Having custome loyalty cards include your birthdate would eliminate another employee callout to verify that yes, the person buying a bottle wine has a gray beard.
Welcome to the future, low skilled workers. (Score:2)
The cost of having a completely automated store is about to dip below paying someone $15.00 per hour and those jobs are going to be automated out of existence. Those unskilled and low skilled workers are about to go from $9.00 to unemployed.
No Whole Foods is not next (Score:2)
Amazon respects the law, Betteridge's law to be precise.
Not crazy at grocery store (Score:2)
In the Boston, US area Stop & Shop has a little handheld scanner that you can carry with you. I just scan every item before I bag it at the cart, then walk up to a self checkout. I scan a little barcode on the scanner itself and then all my items get rung up in a few seconds. Total checkout time is maybe 60 seconds. Very convenient. I'm sure it's widespread, I just don't usually go grocery shopping outside of the area.
Those old ideas come around again and again (Score:2)
Back in the atomic age, it was suggested that supermarkets simply irradiate all the food, so you can add up all your purchases with a geiger counter. To mark up the price, just irradiate the item a little harder. The irradiation kills bacteria and makes the shelf-life of the products better, plus, as the food approaches the sell-by-date, radioactive decay makes the item get cheaper over time.
Using cameras, sensors, and computer vision sounds so much more complicated and intrusive.
Re:A huge vending machine (Score:5, Informative)
Most stores these days have an app where you can search and find the aisle it is located in, faster and better than finding an associate.
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So you have to install another app on your phone that has no room due to all the apps that are needed just to go shopping.
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So you have to install another app on your phone that has no room
I have over a hundred apps on my phone and they collectively occupy less than 5% of my flash storage.
If you don't want to install an app, some stores provide a web interface to search for product location. For instance, Home Depot's website will tell you both aisle and bay on their website. No app needed.
Some other stores provide kiosks where customers can look up product locations and prices.
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And I have about a dozen and a half, plus the ones from Google that came with the phone and all I get is notifications that I'm low on storage forcing me to clear caches etc..
My wife has a feature phone and isn't interested in a smart phone.
This move to having to have apps or at least a smart phone is going to widen the gap between those who have lots of disposable income to buy toys that have suddenly become vital to simply shopping and those who have to be careful of their money due to the cost of living
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And I have about a dozen and a half, plus the ones from Google that came with the phone and all I get is notifications that I'm low on storage forcing me to clear caches etc..
Most likely your phone is bloated with photos and videos. If apps are a problem, it is likely that you have some games with huge content storage for scenes.
It is very unlikely that shopping apps are causing your bloat problems.
This move to having to have apps or at least a smart phone is going to widen the gap
Look, nobody needs an app to shop. You can use a website, or a kiosk, or just walk through the aisles.
Also, smartphones are hardly "out of reach". You can buy a brand new capable Android phone for $50. A used phone is even less.
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Photos and music are on the sdcard, which has 27 GB free, have a couple of small card games. The problem is that apps want to go into the main storage along with the OS so about 4GBs to start with, which is what happens when you buy a $50 phone.
Based on this article, those choices for shopping may well be going away
Re:A huge vending machine (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people don't like shopping.
But most people are also susceptible to impulse purchases, which are triggered by making shoppers browse through those impulse items.
It's more profitable to the supermarket to make you search for the items instead of just guiding you to them.
It's the reason supermarket layouts are incomprehensible and it's the reason they change those layouts every few years.
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Most people don't like shopping.
They don't? Interesting. I find shopping is overall a nice experience, best combined with a relaxing walk. Of course, you have to avoid the rush-hour.
Re:A huge vending machine (Score:5, Informative)
It's the reason supermarket layouts are incomprehensible and it's the reason they change those layouts every few years.
I know someone who works at Costco. I asked him why their products shift around all the time. He told me it is their intentional policy to force customers to search for products rather than just making a beeline to their regular purchases. They call this the "treasure hunt" and he said it boosts sales by 5-10%.
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So maybe the lose 1% of their customers like you but the remaining customers spend 6-11% more. All in all, a win for CostCo (although, they may have lost 1% of their memberships in this hypothetical case and, as of a couple years ago, their membership revenue was about equal to their profits -- effectively they give the merchandise and labor associated with managing it away at cost in order to sell you a membership).
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"It's the reason supermarket layouts are incomprehensible and it's the reason they change those layouts every few years."
Except actual supermarkets have very comprehensible layouts that have components that hardly ever change.
The standard positions that I can recall off the top of my head are:
produce in a front corner near windows, since the produce gets the most presentation improvement from in natural light
milk and eggs in corner furthest from entrance, since they are close to additional cold storage
meat
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> why is it only the cashiers that are automated?
Perhaps because the the checkout process is, to the average customer, the most time-wasting and tedious part of grocery shopping. Therefore, eliminating it is the most obvious customer-facing improvement. As a bonus... except in the cities with idiotic politicians trying to ban cashless payments because something something oppression conspiracy theory about banks so we must chase votes by catering to the "unbanked" loon brigade... going cashless eliminat
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The reason cash has to be a valid payment method is because there are people who've fucked up so bad they can't get a bank account anywhere in town. They've burned all thier bridges. While those people are fucking idiots, you can't just cut them out of society. If society worked that way there'd be no one left, just one smug asshole convinced that he's superior. If cashless stores really do end up being a money saver then more stores will do it, until those people have no options for 20 miles in every direc
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Amazon Go doesn't specialize in groceries, though I suppose if they extend this to Whole Food it would.
I consider it more of a substitute for your local 7-11. Stuff you'd grab on the way home from work. I work in Rockefeller Center and the one in the concourse is great if I just want to grab a snack for the train ride home. I've literally gotten in and out of there in under 15 seconds. I really like that.
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My grocery store simply keeps all checkout lines open (14 including the 2 express lines), the checkout process is pretty quick and using cash makes budgeting simpler with less likely hood of spending money on shit that isn't needed. There's self checkouts that I see the odd person using as well for those who don't like interacting.
They've also got low prices, a large selection of quality goods and treat their workers well enough that the workers aren't interested in unionizing.
Re: A huge vending machine (Score:2)
To me the biggest time waste is trying to get into the heads of the marketeers in order to find shit. Peanut butter and jelly - for example - is in the bread aisle. While this makes some sort of sense if you're buying PB&J for sandwiches, it makes no sense when you're just looking for peanut butter. Hunting down items which have moved or those placed in odd places to initiate a search add to the problem. Some categories of items even get split up by brand, so that you can't - for example - browse all th
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Where the hell is peanut butter and jelly in the bread isle?
I’ve n3ver be3n anywhere where it isn’t In Th3 PB&J isle!
Ok, except at Frys. (remember Frys?) At Frys, the PB&J is found in 5 different illogical isles.
Re: A huge vending machine (Score:2)
My local Albertson's.
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What are you talking about? There are plenty of "automated" stores already. A stolen credit card can be used at a regular grocery as well. Loonies.
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In this situation when facial recognition becomes the norm THE SYSTEM will deny entry if the card and face don't match.
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No idea how this "technology stuff" works, do you? I can see why you post AC.