From Sainsbury’s VAR-style tills to Tesco’s ‘dystopian’ Scan As You Shop check-outs, major supermarkets have been making high-tech changes to the way we buy our groceries.
But shoppers aren’t always impressed. Replacing human workers and shrieks of ‘unexpected item in the bagging area’, has led to strong opposition to self-checkouts, with some customers even bycotting them all together.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that Waitrose regulars aren’t thrilled by their latest ‘upgrade’.
In a UK first, the middle-class stalwart is trailling AI trolleys.
They work in a similar way to Scan and Shop handsets. Shoppers can clip a screen onto the handle bar of their trolley and use it to scan barcodes – as they would with a regular handset.
But then, due to a back-facing camera on the device, the new tech can verify the product.
Given that shoplifting is at an all time high, this does sound like another way to ensure shoppers aren’t scanning lower priced products to get out of paying.
But, according to a spokesperson for Waitrose, it’s all about giving the customer more information.
‘It works in a similar way to our Scan, Pay, Go handsets, with a bigger screen – that identifies every item placed into or removed from the cart, and with a real-time tally of products and prices so shoppers can keep track of purchases,” a Waitrose spokeswoman told The Grocer.
The trial is currently only ongoing in Waitrose Blacknell store, which is often used when testing out new tech.
When it comes to items that don’t have a barecode – like loose fruit and veg or bakery products – there’s a work around. Items that need to be weighed can be done on the in-aisle scales, where a barcode is then printed off. And bakery items can be selected from the screen on the device, in the same way you would at a self check out.
But supermarket shoppers are passionate about self-checkout technology, and this latest trial hasn’t gone down well.
On Twitter, one disgrunttled customer responded to the news by saying: ‘Waitrose can Foxtrot Oscar’. We think we all get the gist…
Others who have used AI trolleys in other supermarkets in the likes of Australia and the USA have had some choice words to say.
‘AI on trolleys seems a bit much,’ said on shopper. While another said: ‘I would find somewhere else to shop.’
One Instagram user even suggested drastic action: ‘Do we all agree to break and steal every single one of these until they get the message?’
However, the spokesperson for Waitrose told the Grocer that while the supermarket was ‘exploring options for more frictionless payment for our customers’ they will also be ‘maintaining conventional checkouts for customers who value interaction with our partners’.
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