There’s a lot of annoying things about being an adult. Paying bills, having to clean the washing machine filter, and choosing between waiting in the checkout line for a million years or fighting with the self machine are my personal least-favourites. Fear not though, because it turns out we’ll have the option of checkout free supermarkets sooner rather than later.
In an interview, a leading executive at Coles, Greg Davis, has said that we could have the technology within 10 years.
“I have no doubt in the next 10 years, customers will be able to take the product off the shelf, put it in their basket, walk out and have it all paid for,” he said.
Coles isn’t the first to come up with this idea. Amazon has come up with the Amazon Go supermarkets open over in the USA where people can grab their groceries without ever interacting with another human being (the dream). A heap of scanners, artificial intelligence, and tech that I’ll never quite understand works out what you’ve picked up and what you leave the store with. When you leave, they charge you Amazon account. It’s pretty cool, really.
Back in Australia, Woolworths have what could be the beginnings of checkout free shopping with their Scan & Go app which can currently be used in 10 stores. The idea with Scan & Go is that people scan individual groceries with their phone and pay for them in the app, and then tap off at a special dock with the other self serve checkouts.
If you’re worried about the people working jobs on the checkouts though, fear not because both Coles and Woolies have said that they’re going to keep regular checkouts.
“We have trialled a number of new technologies to help our customers complete their shopping faster, however there are no plans to phase out the belted checkouts which remain a key part of our store offer,” said a Coles spokesperson.
So now that that’s sorted, if someone could just come and clean my washing machine filter for me, that would be amazing.
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