I know I am not the only one who has ever experienced a toddler break down while waiting on the grocery check out line. After shopping for an hour and playing the “No, chocolate icing covered sugar bits are not suitable breakfast food” game, the last thing you want to do is wait with those kids past the very convenient (for the store) candy bins at the check out line while the person in front writes a personal check.
The self-checkout lines don’t seem to be any better. You still have to wait to use them, and as an added bonus, you have to scan and bag all of your groceries yourself, while preventing that cranky toddler from wiggling free of the straps and falling out of the cart.
But wait. There is a new bit of technology that seems to be very successful for grocery shoppers. It is the personal grocery scanner. While there are several different versions of this technology, most of it works much like the scanner guns you use for wedding and baby registry. You point the gun at your grocery item and then bag it as you go. When you are ready to check out, the scanner prints out a barcode, which you bring to the front of the store to pay.
More sophisticated systems integrate the scanner with the cart, and give additional information to the shopper, such as recipes, a map to other related ingredients, and yes, even a commercial or two.
While this scan and shop technology has been available in Europe for some time, it is just now starting to be incorporated in the United States, with about 100 stores, total, taking advantage of these grocery shopping scanners. Maryland stores, in particular, seems to be enjoying the use of this technology.
To discourage shoplifting, shoppers are randomly pulled aside for audits of their carts, in order to assure that they didn’t take any non-scanned, and therefore non-paid merchandise.
Mary Ann Romans also writes for the Frugal Living Blog here at Families.com, where she shares money saving tips for today’s families.
Related Articles:
Embedded Chips in Your Shampoo: RFID Technology