Interior shots are forbidden: Rewe is testing cashless shopping in Cologne and is making a big secret about the technology.
Image: REWE
No more queuing in the supermarket: the idea has charm, but is making slow progress. This could also be due to the installed all-round surveillance.
UAnd then the moment threatens when the handcuffs don’t click, but a polite employee stops you and asks why the purchase wasn’t paid for. We just walked out of the supermarket. Mind you, with a full shopping bag. It feels weird. We were neither stopped nor were we shoplifters, because the purchase was made in a cashless supermarket, which you can leave without the final checkout process because the items removed are recorded by sensors and cameras. Amazon opened the first store of this type to the public in Seattle in 2018, following a trial run for employees. Amazon Go was a small shop with only 110 square meters and a manageable range. At that time, the billing system could handle a maximum of 20 customers in the store at the same time.
Meanwhile, Amazon has expanded its Seattle store to 2,300 square meters and built several dozen cashless stores in America. Eight will be closed on April 1, but the concept is basically being adhered to, it said. The Internet group has also been present in London as Amazon Fresh for a year. Now many others are following suit. In the past few weeks, Rewe has opened supermarkets without cash registers under the name “Pick & Go” in Berlin, Cologne and Munich. Netto used the same name for a first branch in Munich’s Schwabing district. Aldi Nord launched Shop & Go pilot projects in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and in London. Lidl and Kaufland are testing a “Shop Box” and a “Collect Box”.