Can Amazon Spread Its Cashierless 'Just Walk Out' Technology to Other Stores?

Amazon launched "cashierless checkout" stores In 2018, reports CNBC — but by 2020 it was licensing the "Just Walk Out" technology to other stores in airports, hospitals, and stadiums. In April, Amazon announced it was removing cashierless checkout from its U.S. Fresh stores and Whole Foods locations... In place of Just Walk Out, which typically requires ceiling-mounted cameras, shelf sensors and gated entry points, Amazon Fresh stores and Whole Foods supermarkets will feature Dash Carts. The carts track and tally up items as shoppers place them in bags, enabling people to skip the checkout line. Amazon continues to use Just Walk Out in its grab-and-go marts and UK Fresh stores...

While it's no longer featuring Just Walk Out as prominently in its own stores, Amazon says it has inked deals with a growing list of customers. More than 200 third-party stores have paid Amazon to install the cashierless system. The company expects to double the number of third-party Just Walk Out stores this year, Jon Jenkins, who previously served as vice president of Amazon's Just Walk Out technology, said in a recent interview... Amazon's "primary focus" is selling the technology to third-party businesses and deploying it in small to medium-sized store formats, where the system "tends to generate a little better [return on investment]," Jenkins said...

At one Just Walk Out store, inside Seattle's Lumen Field, home to the NFL's Seahawks, the company said it boosted sales by 112% last season, with 85% more transactions during the course of a game.
Two interesting points from the article:

• "Earlier this year, Amazon also began selling its connected grocery carts to third parties."

• "With Just Walk Out, Amazon faces the challenge of convincing retailers that they can trust one of their biggest competitors with handling valuable shopper data..."

Can't even keep it in their own

[ugen]

They can't even keep it in their own store. Our local Amazon Fresh had the "walk out" corridor for a few years. Never seen a single person use it.
They finally replaced most of it with standard self-checkout area. Left a narrow barely marked lane for the "just walk out" customers.
Ironically, I saw a person trying to use it (literally the first time I saw anyone) just a week ago. Something didn't work right, so he ended up stuck there for an extended period of time, while an associate manually scanned all his products. I am sure he won't make that mistake again.

(P.S. I never buy anything at Amazon Fresh, since it is severely overpriced compared to the exact same products at WM - but it's a convenient drop off for Amazon returns, so I am there fairly often)

Re:

[ArmoredDragon]

Only time I've ever been to Amazon Fresh was to return something to Amazon. I looked at the prices while I was there -- wow, what a joke. Go down to the nearby Ralph's (Kroger) stuff is a lot more reasonably priced (for California standards anyways -- this state hits you in the wallet any way it can, rich and poor alike.) To me, that, and Whole Foods, are just that place you go to when you need to return (for Apple fans: trigger warning) cheap [youtube.com] shit [youtube.com] to Amazon.

Remember when we learned Indian workers are used

[Rujiel]

and not AI, for most stores? Some tech!

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-rep... [gizmodo.com]

Mildly related

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blo... [mataroa.blog]

1998 Called...

[Voyager529]

...they want their concept back [youtube.com].

The idea seems good on paper, and maybe the real helpfulness here is moving from barcodes to RFIDs, but the fact that we're only hitting test deployments in areas with extremely limited number of SKUs reflect the fact that this sort of tech is extremely difficult to scale, and requires lots of cooperation from lots of people simultaneously, and has the potential to introduce liability.

A retailer needs to replenish their shampoo, but they can't order from the palettes of stuff

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Oh my god I remember this concept at the time and reading about it in the magazines. Seemed so cool and futuristic but instead of that we get to scan our own barcodes ourselves.

Interestingly Walmart is still trying to push it, I believe they have used RFID for their logistics operations for some time now but they had an "RFID Mandate"

Benefits, Challenges, and Tips for Adapting to Walmart’s RFID Mandate [inflowinventory.com]

It was fake

[drinkmorejava]

Contrary to the branding, Amazon employed an army of foreign contractors to manually review every item. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone this didn't catch on.

scam anyway

[spaceman375]

I went to an Amazon Fresh just to try it out. All it amounts to is you take the self checkout with you, built into the cart. You still scan the items yourself. The "checkout lane" just tells the self checkout software in the cart to initiate the credit card transaction (you have to enter your card before you start shopping). Not at all the whiz-bang futuristic wow the marketing people want you to believe. It is mildly more convenient because you can see prices, search for items, and it points out sales as y

Re:

[Your.Master]

This was not my experience. I went to a place near Seattle several times (which is now closed). I did preset the credit card into my Amazon account. Then you enter the store, and you do have to scan something to enter the building, and then that's it. You walk in, grab your stuff, and you leave out the exit door.

In particular, there was no shopping cart, nothing pointing out sales, no scanning.

This was available during the early stages of the pandemic (when nobody was even fully sure what to do) and tha

So instead of scanning everything at the end...

[93 Escort Wagon]

With the Dash Carts, you scan each item as you put it into the cart? I'm not sure I see any real time savings there... and it might even take more time. Especially if you have to rearrange stuff as you're shopping (you don't want to put heavy cans on top of your bread, for instance).