Self-checkout: Walmart, Wegmans, Target pull back, as AI promises upgrades to combat shoplifting
Franklin Square resident Ana Gioia uses a self-checkout register at the Holiday Farms supermarket in Franklin Square. Credit: Corey Sipkin
Ana Gioia headed to self-checkout with a few items in her grocery basket at a Holiday Farms in Franklin Square on a quiet Friday night.
“It saves time,” said the Franklin Square resident, 67.
It can, however, have its drawbacks, she said.
“It’s like hidden work. You’re doing the work of the supermarket,” she said.
While some retailers, such as Costco, Dollar General, Walmart and Wegmans, have reduced their number of self-checkout registers in recent years or changed the rules for the registers’ use due to shoplifting or other concerns, overall retailers’ adoption and customers’ use of the technology continues to rise.
Some retailers expect advances in the technology, including artificial intelligence-powered cameras and intelligent sensors, to help tackle the issue of shoplifting at self-checkouts.
“Removing self-checkout registers may be an initial reaction to attempt to curb theft, but it’s unlikely to be an effective solution. We anticipate that the majority of retailers will continue to find that the value of self-checkout registers" outweighs any perceived negatives, according to RetailNext, a San Jose, California-based retail analytics company.
More than 193,000 self-checkout units were delivered to retailers worldwide in 2022, the second-highest amount, after the record-breaking 200,000 shipments delivered in 2021, according to a report released last June by London-based consulting firm RBR Data Services.
RBR said 62% of the units delivered in 2022 did not accept cash, only card or app payments.
Self-checkout accounted for 30% of transactions in grocery stores in 2021, almost double the share in 2018, according to the Food Marketing Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based trade group that represents grocery stores. The share remained steady in 2022.
Some of the increase was due to social-distancing practices amid the COVID-19 pandemic that drew new users to self-checkout registers in 2020 — and many of those customers have not gone back to regular checkout lanes.
Self-checkout was introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s as a tool aimed at reducing retailers’ staffing costs and increasing stores’ efficiency. Automated checkout technology has advanced to include scan-and-go apps and smart carts that use artificial intelligence.
Also, Amazon's Just Walk Out technology allows customers to digitally pay for goods without going through checkout lanes at all. Sensor and camera systems detect when items have been removed from shelves or refrigerators, or returned.
But the growing use of self-checkout and some stores’ pullback of it in recent years is spurring new debate about its impact.
One issue being raised is the impact on retail jobs of having shoppers “work for free” doing tasks that employees should be paid fairly for, critics said.
“There’s no question that if you look at any type of headcount over the last four- or five-year period, you’ll see a dramatic reduction in the number of jobs available in the front of any retail store,” said Robert Newell, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union’s Local 1500, which is based in Westbury and represents 16,000 retail, food and food manufacturing workers, including 7,000 on Long Island.
He estimates that 35% to 40% of an average store’s front-end employees, including cashiers and customer service workers, are eliminated within 12 months of self-checkout registers being installed, but said some of that employee loss is through attrition.
“I think the benefit right now is there is enough talk about [self-checkout] registers and technology, where I think some folks are starting to realize that it’s not just about the convenience of getting out quicker,” said Newell.
In 2022, there were 3.4 million cashiers nationwide, and the number is projected to decline by 348,100, or 10%, by 2032 “because of advances in technology, such as the use of self-service checkout stands in retail stores and increasing online sales,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some retailers, however, dispute the claim that self-checkout is killing jobs, and say the technology is filling a gap caused by their inability to find workers — and they can’t afford to lose customers due to long waits in checkout lanes.
A 2023 report by Forrester Research Inc. found that 10% of adult consumers changed their minds about making purchases because the line looked too long, and 8% left because there weren’t enough employees in the checkout area.
But many retailers that can’t fill jobs aren’t paying high enough wages to attract and retain employees, said Stew Leonard Jr., president and chief executive officer of Norwalk, Conn.-based grocery chain Stew Leonard’s, whose seven supermarkets include two on Long Island.
“That’s the first thing on everybody’s lips right now that has a farm or, you know, a small business: ‘I can’t get anybody to work,’ ” he said.
“Well, then, I [ask], ‘What are you paying them?’ And it’s usually like peanuts compared to the market out there,” he said.
Stew Leonard’s spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” adding self-checkout at its Norwalk store in 2020 and its six other supermarkets, including locations in East Meadow and Farmingdale, in 2022, Leonard said.
“I think the costs offset themselves … we save a little bit on labor. You know, we haven't fired anybody,” he said.
“We’re not doing it because it saves money, I’ll put it that way. I’m doing it more for customer convenience,” he said.
His stores have six to 12 self-checkout registers each, with at least one employee per six registers who is stationed in the area to assist customers.
Self-checkout now accounts for 25% of sales in Stew Leonard’s stores, he said.
Customers like the convenience of getting in and out quickly by using self-checkout, Leonard said.
“First of all, lines. We hate lines. … I’ve never in my whole life met a customer that likes to wait in line. We keep our lines very low in Stew Leonard’s,” he said.
He hasn’t had significant problems with shoplifting related to self-checkout at his stores, he said.
Of David Mandell’s eight grocery stores in Queens and on Long Island, only one has self-checkout — the Holiday Farms in Franklin Square.
He had four Toshiba self-checkout registers installed at the store shortly before it opened in September 2022, he said.
About 30% of the store’s sales are self-checkout.
Mandell is undecided if he will expand self-checkout to his other stores because of some of the limitations with the technology in the registers he has, he said.
“If you buy beer, you have to get someone to come over [to check your ID]. Older people have problems with the produce codes, so a lot of people don’t want to buy produce on it. It can’t take cash or store coupons,” he said.
On the other hand, it gives the store flexibility, he said. “It’s good when you’re busy and people can help themselves.”
Shoplifting in general has risen significantly over the past few years at Aurora Grocery Group's 24 supermarkets in four states, including the eight Gala Fresh Farms and Gala Foods stores on Long Island, said Jenny Jorge, who is an Aurora board member and vice president of Gala Foods on Merrick Road in Freeport.
Self-checkout thefts also have risen at Aurora's seven supermarkets that have the technology, including two stores on Long Island — in Freeport and Baldwin, she said.
Still, self-checkout has been helpful amid the stores’ challenges to hire enough workers, Jorge said.
“Obviously, they don’t call out sick. They don’t miss work. But at the same time, you’re missing that human element,” she said.
Self-checkout is most effective when it is used in conjunction with having employees on hand to aid shoppers who might need assistance with the technology, to provide the best customer service experience, said Fredrik Carlegren, spokesman at Durham, North Carolina-based Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, the second-largest provider of self-checkout technology in the world.
“It’s really moving self-service to assisted checkout,” he said.
Retailers installing self-checkout stations are not primarily motivated by saving money on staffing, he said. “The issue has never been driving costs down as much as it’s been ensuring that you get people through a line.”
Advances in technology are driving retailers' demand for self-checkout, particularly as it relates to "shrink," which retailers define as a loss from theft, damage or other causes, said Anne Johns, account director at Pomeroy Technologies LLC, the Hebron, Kentucky-based technology services provider that installed the self-checkout registers at the Holiday Farms in Franklin Square.
Artificial intelligence can detect when a shoplifter is pretending to scan merchandise and identify items left under the basket, and more sophisticated algorithms are being developed to do these things faster and more accurately, she said.
“A.I. is going to play a huge role in produce [and other product] recognition,” she said.
NCR Voyix, the biggest point-of-sale software provider worldwide, recently released new self-checkout technology that includes the capability for customers to make payments through palm recognition and retinal identification, said Eric Schoch, president of retail and executive vice president at the Atlanta-based company.
NCR’s customers include Dollar Tree, Target and Walmart.
Installing self-checkout in stores has actually reduced shrink at some stores because it reduces employee thefts, he said.
Some retailers have reduced the number of self-checkout registers in their stores or changed their procedures for using it, partly in response to increases in shoplifting.
A Target in Copiague has shut down its self-checkout registers because of shoplifting issues, store employees have told shoppers. The retailer's Minneapolis-based corporate office did not respond to Newsday's inquiries about the shutdowns.
Walmart removed self-checkout registers in two stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in September but declined to say if it was directly tied to shoplifting.
“While there is no single reason for these decisions, we continually look at ways to provide our customers with the best shopping experience possible,” Walmart spokesman Joe Pennington said.
In June, retailer Costco began requiring customers to show their membership cards and photo identification at self-checkout registers after finding that non-members were shopping at the chain’s warehouse clubs.
Dollar General increased its spending on labor by $50 million, raising it to $150 million, in 2023 and is scaling back self-checkout use, which will help with losses due to theft or other reasons, Dollar General’s chief executive, Todd Vasos, said during an earnings call with analysts in December.
“And also, it helps on the convenience side because we had relied and started to rely too much this year on self-checkout in our stores. We should be using self-checkout as a secondary checkout vehicle, not a primary,” he said.
In September 2022, due to shoplifting issues, high-end grocer Wegmans shut down its SCAN app, which allowed shoppers to scan products on their cell phones and bag the merchandise in reusable bags as they walked through stores, and then pay at self-checkout registers.
"SCAN users have told us they love the app and convenience it offers. Unfortunately, the losses we are experiencing prevent us from continuing to make it available," the Rochester-based grocer said.
While self-checkout is touted for its convenience for shoppers picking up a few items, it can have its drawbacks on customer retention, according to a study by Drexel University in Philadelphia that was published in the Journal of Business Research in January.
Shoppers who use regular checkout to buy more than 15 items on average are more loyal to stores where they shop because they feel that they were treated more valuably and, thus, are more willing to return, the study found.
“[The desire for interaction] face to face might be one factor here because a lot of people, they might prefer interacting with human beings instead of rushing,” said one of the study’s authors, Dr. Yanliu Huang, associate professor of marketing at Drexel.
Pat LaPierre stopped at the Holiday Farms in Franklin Square on Friday evening to pick up one of her favorite snacks.
With her Flipz chocolate-covered pretzels in hand, she went to a cashier to check out.
When she's in a rush, she'll use self-checkout, but typically, she’s not a fan of the do-it-yourself task, said the Stewart Manor resident, 67.
“If I use self-checkout" — essentially doing a cashier's job — "I would like the benefits” of getting paid for the work, said LaPierre, who said she also worries that the technology is putting store employees out of work.
LaPierre prefers the social aspect that comes with going to a cashier to checkout in stores.
“I think the interaction is good," she said. As self-checkout use grows, she said, "we’re not going to be social anymore.”
Ana Gioia headed to self-checkout with a few items in her grocery basket at a Holiday Farms in Franklin Square on a quiet Friday night.
“It saves time,” said the Franklin Square resident, 67.
It can, however, have its drawbacks, she said.
“It’s like hidden work. You’re doing the work of the supermarket,” she said.
While some retailers, such as Costco, Dollar General, Walmart and Wegmans, have reduced their number of self-checkout registers in recent years or changed the rules for the registers’ use due to shoplifting or other concerns, overall retailers’ adoption and customers’ use of the technology continues to rise.
Some retailers expect advances in the technology, including artificial intelligence-powered cameras and intelligent sensors, to help tackle the issue of shoplifting at self-checkouts.
“Removing self-checkout registers may be an initial reaction to attempt to curb theft, but it’s unlikely to be an effective solution. We anticipate that the majority of retailers will continue to find that the value of self-checkout registers" outweighs any perceived negatives, according to RetailNext, a San Jose, California-based retail analytics company.
More than 193,000 self-checkout units were delivered to retailers worldwide in 2022, the second-highest amount, after the record-breaking 200,000 shipments delivered in 2021, according to a report released last June by London-based consulting firm RBR Data Services.
RBR said 62% of the units delivered in 2022 did not accept cash, only card or app payments.
Self-checkout accounted for 30% of transactions in grocery stores in 2021, almost double the share in 2018, according to the Food Marketing Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based trade group that represents grocery stores. The share remained steady in 2022.
Some of the increase was due to social-distancing practices amid the COVID-19 pandemic that drew new users to self-checkout registers in 2020 — and many of those customers have not gone back to regular checkout lanes.
Impact on jobs
Self-checkout was introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s as a tool aimed at reducing retailers’ staffing costs and increasing stores’ efficiency. Automated checkout technology has advanced to include scan-and-go apps and smart carts that use artificial intelligence.
Also, Amazon's Just Walk Out technology allows customers to digitally pay for goods without going through checkout lanes at all. Sensor and camera systems detect when items have been removed from shelves or refrigerators, or returned.
But the growing use of self-checkout and some stores’ pullback of it in recent years is spurring new debate about its impact.
One issue being raised is the impact on retail jobs of having shoppers “work for free” doing tasks that employees should be paid fairly for, critics said.
“There’s no question that if you look at any type of headcount over the last four- or five-year period, you’ll see a dramatic reduction in the number of jobs available in the front of any retail store,” said Robert Newell, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union’s Local 1500, which is based in Westbury and represents 16,000 retail, food and food manufacturing workers, including 7,000 on Long Island.
Tyque Nelson, of Shirley, uses the self-checkout at a Gala Foods in Freeport. Credit: Howard Schnapp
He estimates that 35% to 40% of an average store’s front-end employees, including cashiers and customer service workers, are eliminated within 12 months of self-checkout registers being installed, but said some of that employee loss is through attrition.
“I think the benefit right now is there is enough talk about [self-checkout] registers and technology, where I think some folks are starting to realize that it’s not just about the convenience of getting out quicker,” said Newell.
In 2022, there were 3.4 million cashiers nationwide, and the number is projected to decline by 348,100, or 10%, by 2032 “because of advances in technology, such as the use of self-service checkout stands in retail stores and increasing online sales,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Filling a worker shortage?
Some retailers, however, dispute the claim that self-checkout is killing jobs, and say the technology is filling a gap caused by their inability to find workers — and they can’t afford to lose customers due to long waits in checkout lanes.
A 2023 report by Forrester Research Inc. found that 10% of adult consumers changed their minds about making purchases because the line looked too long, and 8% left because there weren’t enough employees in the checkout area.
But many retailers that can’t fill jobs aren’t paying high enough wages to attract and retain employees, said Stew Leonard Jr., president and chief executive officer of Norwalk, Conn.-based grocery chain Stew Leonard’s, whose seven supermarkets include two on Long Island.
“That’s the first thing on everybody’s lips right now that has a farm or, you know, a small business: ‘I can’t get anybody to work,’ ” he said.
“Well, then, I [ask], ‘What are you paying them?’ And it’s usually like peanuts compared to the market out there,” he said.
Stew Leonard’s spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” adding self-checkout at its Norwalk store in 2020 and its six other supermarkets, including locations in East Meadow and Farmingdale, in 2022, Leonard said.
“I think the costs offset themselves … we save a little bit on labor. You know, we haven't fired anybody,” he said.
“We’re not doing it because it saves money, I’ll put it that way. I’m doing it more for customer convenience,” he said.
Linda Danker of North Massapequa checks out at Stew Leonard's in Farmingdale, as an employee looks on. Credit: Rick Kopstein
His stores have six to 12 self-checkout registers each, with at least one employee per six registers who is stationed in the area to assist customers.
Self-checkout now accounts for 25% of sales in Stew Leonard’s stores, he said.
Customers like the convenience of getting in and out quickly by using self-checkout, Leonard said.
“First of all, lines. We hate lines. … I’ve never in my whole life met a customer that likes to wait in line. We keep our lines very low in Stew Leonard’s,” he said.
He hasn’t had significant problems with shoplifting related to self-checkout at his stores, he said.
Of David Mandell’s eight grocery stores in Queens and on Long Island, only one has self-checkout — the Holiday Farms in Franklin Square.
He had four Toshiba self-checkout registers installed at the store shortly before it opened in September 2022, he said.
About 30% of the store’s sales are self-checkout.
Mandell is undecided if he will expand self-checkout to his other stores because of some of the limitations with the technology in the registers he has, he said.
Self-checkout customers often require assistance with produce codes. Credit: Corey Sipkin
“If you buy beer, you have to get someone to come over [to check your ID]. Older people have problems with the produce codes, so a lot of people don’t want to buy produce on it. It can’t take cash or store coupons,” he said.
On the other hand, it gives the store flexibility, he said. “It’s good when you’re busy and people can help themselves.”
Shoplifting on the rise
Shoplifting in general has risen significantly over the past few years at Aurora Grocery Group's 24 supermarkets in four states, including the eight Gala Fresh Farms and Gala Foods stores on Long Island, said Jenny Jorge, who is an Aurora board member and vice president of Gala Foods on Merrick Road in Freeport.
Self-checkout thefts also have risen at Aurora's seven supermarkets that have the technology, including two stores on Long Island — in Freeport and Baldwin, she said.
Still, self-checkout has been helpful amid the stores’ challenges to hire enough workers, Jorge said.
“Obviously, they don’t call out sick. They don’t miss work. But at the same time, you’re missing that human element,” she said.
Self-checkout is most effective when it is used in conjunction with having employees on hand to aid shoppers who might need assistance with the technology, to provide the best customer service experience, said Fredrik Carlegren, spokesman at Durham, North Carolina-based Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, the second-largest provider of self-checkout technology in the world.
“It’s really moving self-service to assisted checkout,” he said.
Retailers installing self-checkout stations are not primarily motivated by saving money on staffing, he said. “The issue has never been driving costs down as much as it’s been ensuring that you get people through a line.”
Advances in technology are driving retailers' demand for self-checkout, particularly as it relates to "shrink," which retailers define as a loss from theft, damage or other causes, said Anne Johns, account director at Pomeroy Technologies LLC, the Hebron, Kentucky-based technology services provider that installed the self-checkout registers at the Holiday Farms in Franklin Square.
Artificial intelligence can detect when a shoplifter is pretending to scan merchandise and identify items left under the basket, and more sophisticated algorithms are being developed to do these things faster and more accurately, she said.
“A.I. is going to play a huge role in produce [and other product] recognition,” she said.
NCR Voyix, the biggest point-of-sale software provider worldwide, recently released new self-checkout technology that includes the capability for customers to make payments through palm recognition and retinal identification, said Eric Schoch, president of retail and executive vice president at the Atlanta-based company.
NCR’s customers include Dollar Tree, Target and Walmart.
Installing self-checkout in stores has actually reduced shrink at some stores because it reduces employee thefts, he said.
Backing away
Some retailers have reduced the number of self-checkout registers in their stores or changed their procedures for using it, partly in response to increases in shoplifting.
A Target in Copiague has shut down its self-checkout registers because of shoplifting issues, store employees have told shoppers. The retailer's Minneapolis-based corporate office did not respond to Newsday's inquiries about the shutdowns.
Walmart removed self-checkout registers in two stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in September but declined to say if it was directly tied to shoplifting.
“While there is no single reason for these decisions, we continually look at ways to provide our customers with the best shopping experience possible,” Walmart spokesman Joe Pennington said.
In June, retailer Costco began requiring customers to show their membership cards and photo identification at self-checkout registers after finding that non-members were shopping at the chain’s warehouse clubs.
Dollar General increased its spending on labor by $50 million, raising it to $150 million, in 2023 and is scaling back self-checkout use, which will help with losses due to theft or other reasons, Dollar General’s chief executive, Todd Vasos, said during an earnings call with analysts in December.
“And also, it helps on the convenience side because we had relied and started to rely too much this year on self-checkout in our stores. We should be using self-checkout as a secondary checkout vehicle, not a primary,” he said.
In September 2022, due to shoplifting issues, high-end grocer Wegmans shut down its SCAN app, which allowed shoppers to scan products on their cell phones and bag the merchandise in reusable bags as they walked through stores, and then pay at self-checkout registers.
"SCAN users have told us they love the app and convenience it offers. Unfortunately, the losses we are experiencing prevent us from continuing to make it available," the Rochester-based grocer said.
While self-checkout is touted for its convenience for shoppers picking up a few items, it can have its drawbacks on customer retention, according to a study by Drexel University in Philadelphia that was published in the Journal of Business Research in January.
Shoppers who use regular checkout to buy more than 15 items on average are more loyal to stores where they shop because they feel that they were treated more valuably and, thus, are more willing to return, the study found.
“[The desire for interaction] face to face might be one factor here because a lot of people, they might prefer interacting with human beings instead of rushing,” said one of the study’s authors, Dr. Yanliu Huang, associate professor of marketing at Drexel.
Pat LaPierre, of Stewart Manor, chose regular checkout this time at Holiday Farms Supermarket in Franklin Square. Credit: Corey Sipkin
Pat LaPierre stopped at the Holiday Farms in Franklin Square on Friday evening to pick up one of her favorite snacks.
With her Flipz chocolate-covered pretzels in hand, she went to a cashier to check out.
When she's in a rush, she'll use self-checkout, but typically, she’s not a fan of the do-it-yourself task, said the Stewart Manor resident, 67.
“If I use self-checkout" — essentially doing a cashier's job — "I would like the benefits” of getting paid for the work, said LaPierre, who said she also worries that the technology is putting store employees out of work.
LaPierre prefers the social aspect that comes with going to a cashier to checkout in stores.
“I think the interaction is good," she said. As self-checkout use grows, she said, "we’re not going to be social anymore.”
Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.
