#GROCERY STORE CHECKOUT FREE#

The front counter was replaced with multiple registers, as customers were now free to fill baskets as they gathered their own items from shelves. The first self-serving grocery store opened in Memphis, Tennessee in 1917. With a maximum of two or three clerks, he wait time for customers not being helped could get quite long. Under the traditional model, one worker could help one customer for however long it took to gather all items on a list. The drawbacks to this system should seem obvious, especially from the perspective of efficiency of labor. The clerk would weigh, package, and calculate the price of goods as well, meaning he had to be proficient at using the appropriate tools to the task (this was before UPCs and scanners). A customer would provide the clerk with a list of items, and the clerk would, some time later, return to the counter with what was needed. We can compare this to the full-service gas stations which are now almost completely eliminated in most areas. The traditional grocery store acted as a middleman between the wholesaler and the customer, with the clerk as the expert in gathering and measuring goods needed by customers. The ubiquitous shopping carts, customers perusing aisles of products, and the lanes of checkout machines would be unimaginable at the time. The “traditional” grocer is barely recognizable when set up beside the modern supermarket. In order to get there, we must understand the history of service in the grocery sector over the course of the past century. To fully understand the function of the automated self-checkout, or Semi Attended Customer Activated Terminal (SACAT), we must first understand the dilemma it was intended to solve and how its properties make it uniquely suited to solve that dilemma.

Grocery store checkout