PCC Community Markets (Washington) has made the decision to remove all the self-checkout kiosks from their stores. They’ve already taken them out of their Fremont, Greenlake, Aurora, and Redmond stores, and the rest will be removed by summer, according to a report by KIRO-TV in Seattle.
“We stopped putting self-checks in our stores in 2016 with the new stores,” said Heather Snavely, vice president of marketing at PCC. “Last year, we renamed ourselves PCC Community Markets and one of the things we did was look at the relationship our shoppers have with our cashiers and our staff. And what we realized was a kiosk doesn’t create community or connections. So we wanted to take those out so that when someone comes into our stores, they have a human connection with someone and an interaction that will make the experience more special.”
Removing technology from a grocery store is exactly the opposite of what many chains are doing. At cashier-free Amazon Go—which has locations in Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco—you can grab a sandwich and a soda and just walk out the door. Your Amazon account is automatically charged as you exit.
At some Walmart and Kroger stores, shoppers can use phone cameras to scan items and pay. And at some big chains, robots are already being used to scan store shelves and alert workers when things need to be restocked.
