Rochester, New York-based Wegmans confirmed that it’s piloting Shop-E, a frictionless checkout device from Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup Shopic, in supermarkets at 675 Alberta Dr. in Amherst, New York, and at 3195 Monroe Ave. in the Rochester, New York. The device is being tested to turn a standard grocery shopping cart into a multifunction “smart” cart and comes just a few months after Wegmans ended its scan-and-go option due to excessive shoplifting and high theft rate. After downloading the Wegmans SCAN app to their smartphones, customers were able to scan groceries as they shopped, put them in their cart/reusable bags, and pay for the items at any self-checkout station by scanning the on-screen barcode. Wegmans expedited the rollout of this feature during the pandemic to provide a contactless shopping solution. Despite strong customer feedback on the app’s convenience, Wegmans reported that the digital scan-and-go tool was unsustainable and discontinued the program. Shopic’s smart cart technology is based on a clip-on unit that shoppers take can attach to a shopping cart during their trip around the store. The device utilizes computer vision to identify products as shoppers put them in the cart and is equipped with a screen that displays pricing and other product details. The artificial intelligence-driven system allows shoppers to pay for their purchases directly on the unit as well. There are no further details on Wegmans’ pilot of Shopic’s smart cart technology, including a specific launch date as the grocery chain is in the preliminary stage of the test and learn pilot and is in no rush to rollout the solution on a broad scale.
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