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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Whole Foods will go. It seems they've been downsizing staff and accepting longer checkout lines. No more "N items or less" line, and the self-service checkout is still barcode-oriented, not Amazon Go technology. Meanwhile, I see huge numbers of Amazon vans driving around.

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Amazon is rolling out the just walk out technology in whole foods stores. Only a couple have it now, but I imagine it won't be long until the rest do too.

How does just walk out work with produce?

Could they do something where each bin of produce is on a scale so that the system charges you for the weight no longer present rather than making you weigh the specific selection?

That would be nice. I fear the solution is individually packaged potatoes increasing plastic waste.

The Amazon fresh near me has a buggy with a bunch of cameras and a scale on it. When you drop food items into it, it's automatically added and weighed. When you push the buggy to an exit line it checks for any errors then emails you a receipt.

If you're wondering how it detects the produce, produce in the US has tiny little stickers on it or at least a PLU code where its sitting. You enter that 4 digit code and it gets weighed.

There's physical Amazon Fresh stores in the Seattle area (at least) which has the just-walk-out technology. I tried the one in Factoria out and it was ... interesting. A lot of groceries were pre-packaged but it had most things that I was looking for.

Felt like a "scaled-up" convenience store. Not having a line was very nice.

Isn't that just the general trend with grocery stores in general (long lines)? I don't know about eliminating express lanes, but I don't know how many years it's been since I've been in a grocery store and seen most of the lanes being staffed, even at peak times. It seems like they'd rather run 2 lanes out of 8, plus the self checkout, rather than even temporarily open up a couple extra lanes to clear out long lines.

That's probably just due to normal staff retention issues that everywhere seems to be experiencing right now. There are still plenty of brand new Whole Foods popping up, plus the Amazon Go technology has just begun to become integrated as of just a few days ago.

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