Retailers using self-checkout fell 16%, Toast reports

Self-checkout use among retailers fell 16.3% year over year, according to new data from Toast.

Toast surveyed 340 decision-makers at US convenience stores, grocers, and bottle shops with 16 or fewer locations, and 36% of respondents said they used self-checkout this year, down from 43% last year.

It is hardly the first indication that enthusiasm for the lanes may be waning. Dollar General removed self-checkout from about 12,000 stores in 2024. CEO Todd Vasos said on an earnings call that the move was to reduce shrink, the catchall term for merchandise disappearing due to shoplifting and other causes. Only two years earlier, the retailer announced that it would operate 200 locations entirely with self-checkout on a trial basis.

Five Below also scaled back self-checkout in 2024, citing shrink as it shifted to having associates handle 75% of transactions overall and 100% at high-shrink stores.

A June report from ECR Retail Loss, a retailer-backed loss-prevention research group, found that in the year after grocery stores installed self-checkout, merchandise losses rose an average of 22%. Grocery stores with self-checkout had losses that were 33% higher on average than stores without it.

Both Target and Schnucks have limited self-checkout to shoppers purchasing 10 items or fewer.

In August 2025, the city council in Long Beach, California, approved an ordinance that required stores to limit self-checkout lanes to 15 items, and to have at least one checkout lane staffed by an employee while self-checkout was offered.

A month later, all four Vons locations in Long Beach and one Albertsons location closed their self-checkout lanes.