Continuous press releases prepare us for setting up cashless supermarkets. The presented reality would include the elimination of queues at supermarket checkouts. What will happen in 2023? Amazon, which launched the concept, shuts down a third of its sites without giving up. The 8 stores located in San Francisco, New York and Seattle will be closing their doors. 21 stores of the same type continue to operate, but plans for new locations are on hold.
How to eliminate queues at the supermarket checkout?
How to eliminate queues at supermarket checkouts While 40% of French people find waiting times at supermarket checkouts “too long”, and 24% even put off shopping because of it, according to an OpinionWay survey. Cause? Maybe with stores… without checkout.
Auchan minutes?
Deployed in China since 2017, Auchan Minute is installed in the car park of Auchan Retail France headquarters. This store/container of about twenty square meters has been made available only for the site staff “Small meals offered for additional purchases, payment being made with company badge” Auchan tells us.
“The idea is to work as an innovation laboratory to strengthen customer knowledge, test new products, new sales, experiment with dynamic information” specifies the distributor, which does not fail to connectThere is no development plan on public roads in France”. To mitigate any disputes over employment.
Developed and deployed in China since 2017 (where there are several hundred to date), Auchan Minute works through the very popular WeChat application there. It is used to identify yourself (after scanning the products at checkout) to unlock the entrance and make payments.
Has the concept matured?
In France, Carrefour is supposed to test its first automated convenience store with its employees at the headquarters of Macy’s (Esson), without checkouts or cashiers, which will operate thanks to cameras equipped with a facial recognition system developed by the Chinese giant Tencent. Carrefour should also experiment with a fully automated mini-market in Brussels: no shelves but screens to select your products with robotic preparation. The hi-tech store will also have pick-up lockers for online orders.
The casino group has also launched cashless shops. For now, the group is thinking experimentally with its “Le 4” location in the Champs-Élysées district.
When big retailers team up with web giants
Carrefour joined forces with another internet giant last June, following the announcement of an alliance between Monoprix and Amazon. The strategic partnership is based on three pillars: the new interface of the Google Shopping site and the deployment of Carrefour offers on the Google Assistant in France, the creation of the Carrefour-Google Lab, and the acceleration of the digitization of the Carrefour group.
Carrefour and Google want to offer a new shopping experience to the customers of the king of hypermarkets in France. “French users will be able to do their shopping – including food purchases – either through a Google Home connected speaker, or through the Google Assistant from their mobile phone, or finally through the new interface of the Google Shopping site in France via the web, and thus the goods are delivered to your home or picked up at the store,” explains Carrefour. Hence deciding your purchases will be a new way of consumption.
Auchan ties up with Alibaba in China
So Carrefour is committed to voice commands in the same way as US giant Walmart, which often sets the “LA” in terms of innovations in mass distribution. Auchan has also tied up with a digital giant. Sun Art, a joint venture owned by Auchan Retail and Ruentex, has actually teamed up with the Chinese Amazon, Alibaba. This alliance between the three actors should participate in the production “Physical Food Business in China”And “Enable all of Sun Art’s activities to benefit from Alibaba’s digital ecosystem” According to the joint press release published at the time of the transaction announcement last November.
Monoprix in partnership with Amazon
Monoprix Group has sealed the tie-up of its Monoprix stores with Amazon. Some products from the French brand (Monoprix Gourmet or Monoprix Bio) should be marketed on the American giant’s platform and offered to its Amazon Prime Now customers, including delivery in less than two hours to Paris and nearby suburbs.
Will checkout in stores end soon?
Technological solutions to eliminate checkouts are on the rise: shopping via camera, smartphone apps for scanning products, payment by facial recognition. But what happens to human relationships if cashiers disappear?
Testing facial recognition payments in China
And others wasted no time in following the American giant’s example. In France, the casino group has opened “Le 4” in Paris, a store open 24 hours. Here again, the principle is simple: scan the purchase through the CasinoMax application, and validate the receipt at the end of the trip to open the exit door, as happens in some Leclerc stores after automated checkout.
Monoprix and Auchan are not left out as they too will have similar projects. Elsewhere in the world, some people are already going long in the way of settling the bill. Thus, in China, Alibaba is testing facial recognition payments at a KFC restaurant. But what about human relationships?
Some oppose technological progress and advocate dialogue. Thus, in Scotland and England, Tesco, on its part, is testing the concept of slow lane (slow line). Finally, if there are many criticisms about job cuts or the disappearance of the conversation, “ Human limits won’t last long if consumer benefit is proven says Philippe Moatti, co-founder of the Society and Consumption Observatory.
Auchan will launch its first store without checkouts or employees in 2019
Auchan is preparing to launch Auchan Minutes: a store concept without checkout or staff, based on the model of Amazon Go stores in the United States. Already well established in China, the Auchan Minute “phygital” store (a contraction of physical and digital) should appear in France from March 2019. It will initially be a reserved trial period – the height of skepticism – for the company’s employees. The first Auchan will open minutes north in Villeneuve-d’Esc
France 3 Hautes de France says that as of March 2019, employees of the Auchan group will be able to go to Auchan minute stores to do their shopping. The concept is simple: a food shop without staff or checkouts, where all purchases are scanned through a smartphone application. Thereafter, the customers will be automatically debited on exit. A concept based on Amazon Go that, on the strength of its success in Seattle in the United States, could flourish throughout the United States within a few years. Targeted at city dwellers and open 24 hours a day, these brand new brands represent a major financial windfall for the companies that rely on them. phygital, But unions rarely hear it that way.
unions on war footing
, There should be new technologies to help humans, Auchan in the column of France 3 France Overiere central representative Ludovic Vinchan in France is sorry. Fully autonomous concepts pose a serious threat to the already precarious jobs of cashiers, At stake, according to trade union delegations: The pure and simple existence of the profession of host and cashier, is under threat from excessive automation. Although this test bench from Auchan is even more dangerous for employment, if it becomes successful, the entire retail sector will come to adopt the phygital model.
Carrefour plans to open an automated store of 56 square meters reserved for its employees at the group’s headquarters in Massey (Esson) in March 2019. As per the report of the exclusive site, the supermarket will not have cash registers and will be operated using cameras equipped with facial recognition system linear,
According to a source in the association, this equipment will locate the customers and the selected items. Thanks to technology developed by its partner Tencent, Carrefour has already tested a facial recognition payment system in China.
,