'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology

ooli@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 513 points –
'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology
bbc.com
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Though the BBC is obviously identified most with UK, it in fact has many international publications. This article focuses on the US, with only a reference to "Booths in the UK", a very small supermarket group I have never heard of before.

Self checkout in the UK is commonplace and largely popular, though some of the general customer criticisms in the article are familiar to me as a regular user of them.

I mean Booths aren't that small, they're just exclusively north-western & fill the same niche as Waitrose, who have virtually no stores in the north west as a result

That means their customer base is pretty much a perfect intersection of people who won't want to use a self-checkout - older people & people who are friendlier to strangers

28 stores is small by UK supermarket standards. Sainsbury's alone have over 1400. I can't reasonably consider Booths reflective of trends across the country, perhaps for the reasons you suggest.

OP's question as to whether the UK is rejecting self checkout on any level isn't really addressed by the example in this article.

Booths is basically unheard of anywhere else in the UK. The only reason I've heard of them is because the bald guy on TikTok that reviews the worst towns in the UK did a video on them.