Okay, part of the Belgian retailer Colruyt Group, has opened its first self-checkout today in a supermarket in Hoegaarden, near Leuven. A dozen stores will follow suit in the next few months, but the (larger) Colruyt supermarkets will not.
“Trust our customers”
One thing is special about the Hoegaarden self-checkout: unlike other retailers, “We will not install gates, as we trust our customers”, spokesperson Eva Biltereyst told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad. There will always be a staff member present at the self-checkout to help customers.
“Before the year is over, we will have opened the system in ten stores of the Okay, Okay Compact and Spar Colruyt Group chains. Next year, we will look at how we can take the implementation a step further”, she adds. There currently are no plans to deploy the system to the larger Colruyt Laagste Prijzen supermarkets: they test other kinds of technology to improve the flow at the check-outs, such as smart cameras that automatically scan products.
Another of Colruyt’s chains, the more up-market CRU, already has self-checkout in all of its four stores – with the well-known gates.
