TECHNOLOGY
continue to learn more about what works best for our customers,” Lefevre said.
pandemic — a lot more than I would have anticipated pre-COVID — and now, a more autonomous checkout is here.”
The same is true at Kwik Trip Inc., based in La Crosse, Wis., and operating more than 800 convenience stores. The pandemic pushed the company into partnerships with third-party delivery services, carryout and curbside options. Kwik Trip is still learning and evolving these options into 2022, according to Tom Colbert, director of IT for the chain.
Frictionless Fever
“We are integrating these options into our current system to try to alleviate any additional labor concerns to execute,” he explained. Frictionless checkout solutions — whether traditional self-checkout machines or mobile app options — are something that exploded during the pandemic, changing the trajectory for this technology substantially as COVID-19 accelerated its adoption, noted Patrick Thomas Raycroft, a partner with W. Capra Consulting Group, a firm based in Chicago. “Consumers figured out through COVID that they don’t see a lot of value spending time at a register, whether because of contact with someone or time,” said Raycroft. “A lot of checkout solutions were implemented with the
“With a stable and secure tech foundation, we are shifting more of our tech spend to drive the growth and transformation of our business to meet the evolving needs of our customers and team members.” — Deb Hall Lefevre, Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. 60 Convenience Store News C S N E W S . c o m
For many c-store retailers, their top priorities for 2022 when it comes to technology implementation include frictionless shopping and checkout; all things digital; optimizing labor; and data collection, integration and analytics. Building out a frictionless self-checkout solution is top of mind for a lot of the major c-store chains, with some already testing a variety of options and others already in full rollout. This includes visual and artificial intelligence (AI) technology like what is used in Amazon Go stores — although there are still issues to work out when it comes to imaging and foodservice, according to Gabe Olives, chief information officer at Impact 21, a consulting company based in Lexington, Ky. “Everyone is looking to install self-checkout in one form or another, whether it’s allowing people to use their own device as a scanner, traditional self-checkout where one employee monitors several of them, or the imaging model like Amazon Go,” Olives said. “But while visual tech works great for an item on the shelf or in a cooler, it doesn’t for food encased in a bag or Styrofoam, so people still have to scan a barcode.” Circle K stores are testing Grabango checkout-free technology, which allows customers to shop while it tracks the items they pick up, and then they scan the code in the Grabango app to pay for their items. Several other c-store retailers are piloting Grabango. GetGo, the c-store arm of Giant Eagle Inc., based in Pittsburgh, Pa., and operating 266 locations, retrofitted four stores in the Pittsburgh market in September 2021, while BP announced the rollout of Grabango to 10 Amoco and ampm sites in California and Pennsylvania in December 2021. “At our retail lab store on the campus of McGill University in Montreal and in seven stores in Arizona, we are testing several fully frictionless store experiences that use computer vision and AI to enable customers to shop and pay while skipping the line, and carefully looking at how this drives customer satisfaction, shopper behavior and sales,” Lefevre said. Circle K is also continuing to focus on a countertop self-checkout solution that’s currently in more than 300 stores and automatically identifies, prices and totals items placed on a platform. “We are excited about the impact it’s having on checkout speed,” she said. Additionally, the chain is testing frictionless technology at the forecourt in all Circle K locations in Sweden, and will be expanding its pay-byplate option into new markets, according to Lefevre. This option uses license plate recognition technology so that drivers need only pull up, pump their fuel, and then pull away without even having to take out a wallet or phone. One hurdle with frictionless checkout that many retailers will be diving into, including Circle K, is how to handle age-restricted products. This is something the industry is already working on, especially since these types of products make up a large amount of c-store purchases. “It’s promising to see momentum building for a common age verification platform that can be used industrywide,” Lefevre said. “Platforms currently under development in partnership with NACS can help ensure that as an industry, we continue living up to our shared
