It looks like many Dollar General shoppers who got used to self-checkout machines will have to wait in line for cashiers again since more than half of the chain’s 20,000 stores have removed them.
Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos revealed that 12,000 cut self-checkout in an earnings call last month, according to Business Insider. Last month alone the company discontinued self-checkout at 3,000 stores.
“Moving forward, we plan to have self-checkout options available in a limited number of stores, most of which are higher-volume and low-shrink locations,” said Vasos, as quoted by Business Insider.
The National Retail Federation describes shrink (also known as shrinkage) as “a measurement of inventory loss as a percentage of sales during a specific inventory period,” that “is used to forecast or account for losses in a retail balance sheet.”
CNN also reported on Dollar General’s decision to back out of the self-checkout trend – according to the outlet, “shrink” was mentioned 37 times during the earnings call. It also said that thousands of stores would convert at least some self-checkout kiosks to regular cashier checkout lanes. In some stores, self-checkout would be restricted to five items or less.
“Dollar General has skeleton staffing levels in stores and is more vulnerable to shoplifting and other merchandise losses than many other retailers, retail analysts say,” per CNN. Citing Vasos, the outlet said Dollar General made the decision to nix self-checkout after using artificial intelligence to analyze hundreds of thousands of purchases.
Self-checkout theft has become a big enough concern to inspire proposed legislation. Audacy reported in May that Democrat Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas introduced Senate Bill 1446, the Retail Theft Prevention and Safety Act, in the California legislature. During an April 17 committee meeting shared by Cal Matters, she said that an estimated $10 billion in losses are attributed to self-checkout stands annually. In press release, Smallwood-Cuevas also said self-checkout stands can put store employees at risk.
This spring, we also reported that Amazon would discontinue its Just Walk Out technology that went a step further than self-checkout and allowed users to walk out of the store after being surveilled by cameras and artificial intelligence. As it turns out, the AI didn’t work as planned and the program relied on real people to review and label footage.
Walmart, Costco and Target have also announced recent changes to their self-checkout offerings. Target said in March that it would put a 10-item or less restriction on its self-checkout lanes and the following month Audacy reported that customers were “fuming” over a new policy giving managers discretion over when to open the self-checkout kiosks.