Last Updated on April 22, 2024
Credit: Grabango
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re wondering if Aldi is getting rid of all scanners, cashiers, and checkout lanes, visit our fact check post here.
For years, we have argued that a checkout-free experience was a natural fit with Aldi’s corporate philosophy. Even as the grocer added self-checkout to stores, we believed that an experience where shoppers could bypass checkout altogether would define Aldi’s future. Aldi appears to believe that, too, as both Aldi companies have experimented with the technology in recent years: Aldi Süd brought a checkout free to a store in the United Kingdom in 2021, while Aldi Nord tested the tech in the Netherlands in 2022.
Now, the future has finally come to America.
On April 16, 2024, tech company Grabango announced that it was deploying its checkout-free technology at an Aldi store in the Chicago, Illinois, area. The technology is called Aldigo, stylized as ALDIgo. According to Grabango, Aldi “is the first major U.S. grocery retailer to deploy checkout-free technology in an existing, full-size store.” The tech company adds that it was able to do this without making any changes to the store’s layout or product displays.
How? According to the Grabango’s FAQ page, cameras are placed above the shopping area to monitor the location of all products. “There are no sensors at eye level,” the FAQ explains, and there is no use of lasers or facial recognition. The cameras then use machine learning algorithms — the backbone of artificial intelligence — to process product movement. Grabango describes it as “similar to the technology used by autonomous [self-driving] vehicles but much more reliable.”
The Aldigo store is located at 2275 West Galena Blvd. in Aurora, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. To use Aldigo, shoppers just shop like they normally do; there are no special gates or carts. When a shopper is done, they go to the Grabango pay station near the front of the store, where they can either pay with the Grabango app (available on Google Play and the Apple App Store) or with a debit or credit card.
In other words, you don’t have to go through a checkout lane where your items are individually scanned. The cameras have already detected what you have put in your cart, so all you have to do is pay for your groceries.
You don’t need Aldigo to shop at this particular Aldi store, though. Aldi is keeping a traditional cashier lane open in the store should shoppers need it.
Grabango’s announcement comes just two months after reports surfaced that Amazon was removing its checkout-free technology, called Just Walk Out, from its Amazon Fresh stores. While Amazon — in a blog piece posted the day after Grabango’s announcement — publicly insisted it is not giving up on the tech, Amazon seems to be pivoting toward selling its technology to other stores. Grabango, for its part, has publicly criticized Amazon’s technology, arguing that it uses less reliable shelf-sensors as opposed to Grabango’s overhead cameras.
Time will tell how Grabango’s technology fares or what other Aldi stores might see this technology down the road.
You can read Grabango’s full press release here.
