Walmart, Target, and Dollar General shake up self-checkout

Target is trying something new when it comes to self-checkout. Starting this week, the option is only available to customers buying 10 items or fewer. The retail giant piloted this approach at 200 stores last fall. Now it’s expanding the policy to its entire footprint, marking a significant pull-back in how self-checkout can be used at one of the country’s biggest retailers.

The company said that use of self-checkout soared during the pandemic, because customers preferred a more “contactless option.” Now “ease and convenience are top of mind,” Target said, so it piloted the 10-item limit and found that the checkout process was twice as fast.

“By having the option to pick self-checkout for a quick trip, or a traditional, staffed lane when their cart is full, guests who were surveyed told us the overall checkout experience was better, too,” the company said in a statement.

Meanwhile, rival Walmart also appears to be experimenting with who gets to access self-checkout. Per a report from Business Insider, several locations are limiting the option to Walmart+ subscribers and Spark delivery drivers, though a spokesperson told the outlet that this doesn’t reflect a storewide policy and that individual stores are allowed to experiment.

In addition, in a more drastic move, Dollar General is removing self-checkout lanes entirely from 300 locations with the highest levels of shrink. It’s also converting self-checkout registers to “assisted checkout” in approximately 9,000 stores, with the goal of driving traffic to staffed registers and keeping assisted options as backup.

“Although adoption rates for self-checkout have been high, we believe there’s truly no substitute for an employee presence at the front end of the store to greet customers and provide excellent customer service, including at checkout,” CEO Todd Vasos told investors last week.