Groceries & Gadgets

Stop & Shop's geeked-out stores help boost bottom line

By Hiawatha Bray
The Boston Globe
August 21, 2008

I stopped by one of my favorite high-technology retailers the other day, to pick up some skim milk.

No, Best Buy and Circuit City haven't added dairy departments. I buy my groceries at Stop & Shop Supermarket Co., the big grocery chain that might offer the most geeked-out shopping experience in America.

Many of Stop & Shop's 376 stores feature a variety of digital devices that let customers weigh their own veggies, order deli meats by using a video touch screen, and pay their bills without human assistance. Many other retailers, like Stop & Shop's main Boston-area rival, Shaw's Supermarkets Inc., offer self-checkout. But Stop & Shop has gone further than any of its rivals to automate our trips to the grocery.

The company has quietly deployed the technology in dozens of locations since 2005. Now, it will plug the gadgets into many more stores over the next year, as part of a major face lift. "It is an opportunity for us as the market leader to stay in front of the pack," said Jim Dwyer, the chief business development officer for Ahold USA, Stop & Shop's Dutch parent company.

Instead of saving labor, the new gadgets shift it, from store employees to shoppers. Users weigh, scan, and bag their own purchases, preferably in reusable cloth bags, priced at 99 cents each. Good for the environment, and for the bottom line. No wonder the bags are green.

When I asked Stop & Shop spokesman Robert Keane about how all this technology will reduce labor costs, he deftly sidestepped the question. "This is something to really offer the customer choices," he said. And of course, he's right. After years as a faithful Shaw's customer, I switched to the Stop & Shop in Quincy because its grocery tech gets me in and out of the store so much faster.

Besides, it's cool.

Especially the device at the heart of the Stop & Shop system, the Scan It personal scanner. Shaped like a bar of soap with a pistol grip, the Scan It has been deployed in about 90 Stop & Shops, the first large-scale deployment of the system anywhere in the world. Scan It is a lot sleeker and simpler than the first personal scanners introduced by Stop & Shop in 2005. The old device, called Shopping Buddy, was about as big and heavy as a laptop computer and overburdened with features shoppers didn't need, like a digital map of the store or games to keep children occupied while their parents shopped.

" It was too much for the shoppers," said Michele Deziel, spokeswoman for Modiv Media Inc., the Quincy company that designed the software for Shopping Buddy and Scan It.

The new version, introduced last year, keeps things simple. You activate it by scanning a Stop & Shop "loyalty card," the kind you may already use to get discounts on various items. Now just walk the aisles. When you pick an item, aim the Scan It at the barcode and press a button. The device tracks each selection and the total price of your purchases.

The do-it-yourself strategy also applies to items that aren't scanner-friendly, like deli meats and vegetables. You can use a touch-screen computer to place deli orders; when your corned beef is ready, Scan It flashes you a message. For produce, scales calculate the correct price when you punch in a four-digit code for each item. Out pops a barcoded sticker.

It works fine, if you know the code, or if a code sticker has been glued to your onions or broccoli. Often, though, there is no sticker, forcing you to search for it using the scale's touch screen. Usually this works, but sometimes it doesn't, leaving shoppers irritated and possibly vitamin-deficient.

One thing you can't purchase alone is booze. Scan a six-pack of Bass Ale, and a human will meet you at the checkout to confirm you're old enough to drink.
Scan It is also a subtle but persistent salesman. Scanning the loyalty card links the device to a history of your previous purchases. Stop & Shop's system uses this data to come up with special offers for products you might fancy. The offers are relayed to Scan It, which gently pings you about discounts. You'll be glad to know that personal data, like names or credit card numbers, don't travel over the wireless network - just a numerical code that identifies you as a sucker for pasta.

Still, this can all seem a little intrusive. Then again, it's nothing new. Retailers invented loyalty cards to track customers; Scan It just lets them ride herd on us every minute we're in the store. If you don't like it, get rid of your card - and forget about using Scan It.

Your last stop is the automated checkout line. These come in two varieties - a simple kiosk for small purchases and a long line with a conveyor belt for big shopping trips. The little kiosk, with its rack for bagging your purchases, can be a nuisance if you use a paper sack to line the plastic grocery bag. The rack has a scale to make sure you're not sneaking items past the scanner to avoid paying. Sometimes it reads an extra bag as an unscanned item and halts the checkout process. It's infuriating. I prefer the less-irksome conveyor belt.

Either way, it's time to pay. Scanning a barcode mounted atop the checkout device tells the Scan It you're done. Swipe your loyalty card at the checkout scanner, and it instantly reads your list of purchases and tells you how much to pay. Now and then, you'll be ordered to a checkout line where a human attendant will rescan your purchases. It's a random audit to deter theft. But usually, the machine just asks for the money. Shove in a few bills or swipe a credit card, and it's all over but the bagging.

And no 99-cent cotton eco-sacks either. I use disposable paper and plastic, paid for by Stop & Shop. All my scanning and weighing saved it a tidy sum in labor costs; it's the least they can do.