Aldi has retrofitted its Aurora, Ill. supermarket with cashier-free checkout technology powered by computer vision. ALDIgo, using technology from Grabango, tracks which items shoppers put in their carts; customers can then pay with a credit or debit card or the Grabango app at cashierless pay stations or they can use traditional manned lanes.
“It’s exciting to see a checkout-free capability live in one of our stores,” said Eric Traxler, VP of IT at Aldi in a statement. “Aldi is continuously looking for new ways to be innovative and provide a best-in-class experience for our shoppers, and ALDIgo is a great example of that in action.”
“Although more challenging, it was important to us to launch this technology in a typical store and not one purpose-built for us,” noted Will Glaser, CEO of Grabango in a statement.
Amazon, one of the pioneers of cashierless solutions, has been moving away from deployments in supermarkets. Earlier this month, the company revealed that it was removing its cashierless Just Walk Out technology from its Amazon Fresh supermarkets and would not deploy it in new locations scheduled to open later this year. However, the solution remains in place in a range of smaller, more defined retail spaces, including hospitals, sports stadium shops and college campuses.
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Despite some consumer and retailer grumbling about traditional self-checkout, where consumers must scan each item separately, it’s still going strong: Target, for example, rolled out Express Self-Checkout, with a 10-item limit, chainwide in March 2024.
