CVS (a drug store) by me has also gotten rid of cashiers... but for self-checkout. So have Royal Farms, a regional gas station/convenience store chain. At both places, if you really try, you can maybe get a cashier at a single human cashier counter, but it's normally unstaffed, and everyone directed to the multiple self check out stations.
(I think USA readers know what i mean by self checkout station, but it's, where you can items yourself, and place them in bags yourself, and it yells at you if it doesn't detect the right weight of items placed in bags on a platform, and the whole thing is video taped).
Amazon's stre isn't really an alternative to cashiers, it's an alternative to universal self-checkout that everyone else is moving to -- accelerated by the pandemic, but still relatively early on the adoption curve.
I assume universal self-check-out does reduce staffing needs, which is why they are all moving to it?
I suspect the Amazon cashierless stores won't really take off until all their competition is universal self-checkout. (Which may never happen in say NYC, where you have so many independent very-low-overhead bodega-type stores. But in most places, the competition is more like CVS or Royal Farms).
Although I dunno, maybe I'm unusual in prefering human contact to self-checkout, something about the choices being self-checkout with a line or walk out of the store without checking out -- starts to make the Amazon option actually look like something you would want.
I always find that self-checkout system that everyone uses to be slower and clunky. The worst is at the grocery store where I have to search and find each item of produce, weigh it and then carefully place it in the bag. If any step in that flow goes slightly wrong, the system freezes and waits for an employee to come by and check what I'm doing.
However, in the "fast casual" space, where I'm able to order food items on a touch screen system, or a mobile website, I have actually become much happier to do that. Sometimes it takes me a while to know what I want and having access to pictures or longer descriptions helps me on my journey.
I'm not too worried about systems like completely replacing human contact though. I've seen similar attempts at sit-down restaurants and bars fail, likely because people go to those places expecting to interact with another human.
Self checkout is generally annoying in a few cases:
* You use reusable bags. In general most systems I've used dislike when you put a bag in the area with the weighing things, so now I have to spend double the time moving items around because they can't just go directly into the bag
* with fresh produce, the cashier will most likely have the most common items memorized and punch in the code without a hitch, whereas I have to navigate a clunky UI to figure out which kind of green onions to charge
* anything involving an ID check is much faster; a human is legally required to be there to verify, and the cashier is already conveniently there, as opposed to a self-checkout register where I have to wait for somebody to come to me
The only issue I have with them is limited area to put your bags. Is the space made for ants? In college I was a cashier so I still have a 6th sense about where UPC/QR codes are and I can buzz through items as fast as most cashiers, however the limited bagging areas are very annoying.
There are sit-down restaurants near me that now the only way to order is by scanning a QR code, which identifies your table, and ordering on a website. Someone drops your food off when it's ready, you've already paid with a credit card on the website. (You can add a tip).
Started during the pandemic, pretty sure it's never going away. (The folks who made those apps bet right).
I try to avoid them.
But in the area of CVS (USA-style drug stores) or Royal Farms (chain convenience store, often attached to a gas station) -- as well as grocery stores in general -- self-check-out is already predominant around me, and I also don't see it going away. I suspect you're right it will never totally win in the restaurant space, but in the grocery store and convenience store space, it pretty much already has over here.
> I assume universal self-check-out does reduce staffing needs, which is why they are all moving to it?
My grocery store has 8 self-checkout stations overseen by one employee, and like 10 or so regular checkout lanes. Advantages of self-checkout:
* Less employees to manage it (regular checkout usually has the cashier and a bagger, so we're looking at 1 employee vs 16 for the same number of open registers).
* A single entry line, so if one customer gets stuck the rest of the customers behind them aren't just standing there waiting, so as long as you know how to use self-checkout it's going to be faster.
* The conveyor belts on regular checkout are often pretty gross (dried sticky pop for example), while at self checkout you're putting your items directly into the bag after scanning them.
CVS (a drug store) by me has also gotten rid of cashiers... but for self-checkout. So have Royal Farms, a regional gas station/convenience store chain. At both places, if you really try, you can maybe get a cashier at a single human cashier counter, but it's normally unstaffed, and everyone directed to the multiple self check out stations.
(I think USA readers know what i mean by self checkout station, but it's, where you can items yourself, and place them in bags yourself, and it yells at you if it doesn't detect the right weight of items placed in bags on a platform, and the whole thing is video taped).
Amazon's stre isn't really an alternative to cashiers, it's an alternative to universal self-checkout that everyone else is moving to -- accelerated by the pandemic, but still relatively early on the adoption curve.
I assume universal self-check-out does reduce staffing needs, which is why they are all moving to it?
I suspect the Amazon cashierless stores won't really take off until all their competition is universal self-checkout. (Which may never happen in say NYC, where you have so many independent very-low-overhead bodega-type stores. But in most places, the competition is more like CVS or Royal Farms).
Although I dunno, maybe I'm unusual in prefering human contact to self-checkout, something about the choices being self-checkout with a line or walk out of the store without checking out -- starts to make the Amazon option actually look like something you would want.