Shoppers Fill In As Checkers At Some Supermarkets Self-Service Checkout Gaining Favor To Speed Up Process, Lower Costs

Your shopping cart is loaded with bread and toilet paper and eggplant and you’re ready for the checkout line.

Instead of looking for the speediest checker, you head toward the lane with only a computer screen and an empty bag. You scan your groceries, bag them and pay with a bank card.

If you stick an unscanned bottle of antacid into your bag, a face comes on the computer screen and points out your - ahem - mistake.

This scenario is being played out throughout the country at grocery and drug stores experimenting with self-service checkout.

“The customer feels it’s faster because they walk up and do the scanning themselves,” said Jonathan Hayward, vice president and chief engineer at Stores Automated Systems Inc. in Bristol, which recently introduced a self-scan checkout system.

Stores can save money by replacing some cashiers, even though a flesh-and-blood clerk must be stationed at the junction of three checkout lanes to assist shoppers using SASI’s system, Hayward said.

Rite Aid, the drug store chain with 2,771 stores in 21 states and Washington, D.C., is testing SASI’s new system, eXPRESS, at two Philadelphia-area stores this summer.

A sensitive scale under the customer’s bag detects any unscanned items. Customers using coupons or paying with cash still need the help of the clerk, as will anyone who bags an unscanned item.

“We are a very convenience-oriented chain and this is basically one additional possible service that we could provide to assist in the convenience of our shoppers,” Rite Aid spokesman Craig Muckle said.

After a six-month test, Rite Aid will decide whether to place the system in other stores.

Several grocery store chains have been experimenting with self-scanning stations produced by Optimal Robotics of Plattsburgh, N.Y. Store employees monitoring the checkouts over a closed-circuit television are available to help any customers stymied by the system, U-Scan Express.

Joanne Gage, spokeswoman for Price Chopper of Schenectady, N.Y., said the company has made modifications to Optimal’s system while testing it at a Clifton Park, N.Y., grocery the past three years.

“It’s used more like an express lane. People tend not to use it for big orders … ” she said. “There are some customers that never want to use it.”

Shoplifting has not been a problem, said Gage, who called the system foolproof.

“There is some supervision. There is a person there who helps to identify produce. One person can man four stations, so it’s a great labor-saving device,” she said.

Price Chopper will keep the system in the one store but has no plans to expand to its 90 other groceries.

A Lakewood, Ohio, Finast supermarket has been testing a hand-held scanner, the Personal Shopper System, which allows selected shoppers to register their purchases as they roll their carts through the aisles.

The store initially tested the portable scanners with 100 shoppers, has extended it to 300 and plans to have 1,000 customers using the system by the end of summer, according to Nancy Tully, spokeswoman for scanner developer Symbol Technologies Inc. of Holtsville, N.Y.

The portable scanner, first used in The Netherlands, has been installed in 24 stores in a British chain that plans to introduce it to 36 more markets this summer. Another dozen U.S. grocery and discount stores are planning to test the system as well, Tully said.

When customers return their scanners, they receive a bar-coded ticket that they take to the clerk in a special express lane.

The portable system costs $200,000 to $300,000. Grocers report shoppers are spending more and shoplifting has declined, said Tully.

Wendell Young III, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1776 in Philadelphia, said he was more concerned about the effect the machines will have on employees.

“One person handling three machines, especially in a food store, it’s just not humanly possible. I don’t see it working …” Young said.

Young said customers still want personal interaction with a clerk.

“It’s like being served a beer by a robot in a pub,” he said, adding in mock robot monotone: “Would you like your Guinness?”