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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

> produce that needs to be weighed

In Spain and France (and probably other countries too) they’ve been doing something that’s pretty neat in regards to the fruits and vegetables since long before self-checkout even became a thing, but which helps a lot now with self-checkout as well.

When you go to the fruits and vegetables section of the store, a lot of these stores have a scale there with a printer.

So when you pick the fruits and vegetables, you weigh and print a label for them there and then.

And then when you get to the checkout, you just scan the item.

You kind of have to experience this in person to see why that works well, but it does :)

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> You kind of have to experience this in person to see why that works well, but it does :)

Nope. Your description of it is enough. This sounds like a great solution to the bulk goods issue (produce, nuts, beans, etc.)

I love self checkout at Home Depot. It’s just a wireless barcode scanner. No scales or annoying “unknown item in the bagging area” admonishments. Just scan scan scan scan done. You can leave all the items in the cart.

Uniqlo’s self checkout is also cool. All RFID. You dump the clothes into the bin and they instantly tally up on the screen. I didn’t know this the first time I used it, so it was magical.

I remember that in 1991 there was an article (IIRC paid PR by Siemens) how the checkout by RFID is the next big thing that will happen the following year. 20 years later it started to really pop up in the stores in the form of EPC Gen2 RFID for customer-facing applications. The obvious common usecase are libraries, as there is defacto standard extension for exactly that application (the tags can also work as EAS tags that can be enabled/disabled over the EPC radio interface), another huge application are clothing and sporting goods retailers. From extensive playing with the technology I had concluded that the reliability leaves a many things to be wished for, but apparently in these applications either the amount of distinct items is small enough or missing few of them do not really matter (if you scan a whole pallet of EPC tagged items you are bound to miss some of them and thus it is only good as an approximation, if you scan a shopping cart it is probably more reliable. Reason for that is on one hand the physics of the radio interface that can be shadowed by somewhat surprising kinds of objects, like people, and the other is that there is a ridiculously large, but still finite amount of tags that can be de-conflicted and read in a given time).

Decathlon in France also has RFID bin + digital readout. It is quite magical. It's interesting how much coaching the attendants did so that we would be comfortable (I guess we looked clueless).

Yeah same with Decathlon in Spain too. My mind was literally blown when I saw this because I did not know until we were at the checkout.

Same thing in Poland. I’m very surprised that this is not a common standard. I saw rage same in Austria, Italy… basically EU countries. I’m very surprised this is not common in US which is usually known as a place where many retail technologies have emerged. By the way, the plastic bag must not be wasted. If I take a few bananas I do not take any plastic bag, I just put a sticker on one of them, and then drop them all into bag area after scanning so that total weight matches expected. Same applies to many fruits which do not need a separate plastic bag (apples, oranges, …).

In america we seem to be headed toward individually wrapping everything in plastic.

I'm not going to be surprised when I see individual onions in plastic, or blueberries by the berry. Potatoes and corn have already fallen.

This was common in Czech Republic, but the large stores switched back to weighting at the cashier checkout. I assume that the way how the consumer-facing scales are connected to the rest of the store's system has something to do with the stores wanting to eliminate it (different vendors and the backend interface typically involves shuffling CSV files around over FTP or SMB). Obviously, with the variations of borrow a scanner (Typically Zebra MC17/MC18/PS20)/scan by mobile application they had to reintroduce the scales back, so now they are somewhat stuck in supporting both of these processes. And well, I became so accustomed to scanning things myself as I put them into the cart that for me and large grocery purchases the only real alternative for that is not going to the store at all and ordering it online.

This is how this actually works:

1. Put product in bag

2. At the checkout, suddenly remember that you have to label it yourself

3. Go back to the fruit and veg section

4. Try to find the 2 to 4 digit number that denotes said product

5. Wait your turn to use one of the two scales, more usually the single functioning one

6. Realise you've forgotten the number and go find it again

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 as required.

8. Print label and return to checkout

It is the antithesis of neat, and just because they don't want to install scales at the checkout.

Of course after a few years they actually got scales at the checkout, probably because all checkout systems had them and they were no longer and option, but now the cheap and barely functioning self-checkout systems have no (functioning) scales, so back to self-labeling hell.

I'm in a market where a US grocery brand likes to trial technology at their stores. They had some produce UPC generation stations there for about a year and eventually got rid of them. I asked some people at the store about it, and they essentially gave the same reason. People didn't understand it, didn't want to deal with it, etc. So most customers just ignored them and the checkout counter still had to deal with it anyways.

France (at least all the places I've shopped) omits steps 6 & 7 because the scale has item lookup.

Also if they see you're a clueless foreigner, they will have an attendant go label them for you while you're in line - keeping you uncomfortable so you won't screw up again.

The NYC area grocery chain Fairway–of which most locations have sadly closed after a bankruptcy in 2020–took this concept a step further with a mobile checkout app, you could weigh your produce and enter it into the app as you shopped (as well as scan package barcodes), then pay directly in the app and walk out. A clerk would sometimes audit your bags, but it was so much better than the typical American supermarket self-checkout.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fairway-market-mobile-checkout...

We have that in my US grocery, I just worded it that way because it doesn't affect the point I was making.

Though personally I use those scales but not their printer. I scan every item as I add it to my cart, and those scales display a bar code too.

American produce aisles have these as well, but now I have to create the waste of a printed sticker and most likely a bag as well to get groceries I could have otherwise purchased by weight.

I wish a grocery store would understand "tare" correctly and let me have barcoded and labelled reusable containers - fill the potato bag with potatoes, scan and weight the filled bag and be on my way.

In the UK, the self checkout machine has a weighing scale built in, and you select the type of produce while it's on the scales during checkout, much like a cashier might. I prefer it to the code system you find on the continent.

And you have to find your item among hundreds of items

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