Edeka Regionalgesellschaft Südbayern has equipped the E-Center Penzberg, around 50 kilometres South of Munich, with 20 smart shopping trolleys from the start-up KBST. With this, Edeka Group now has more than 2,000 of the manufacturer’s intelligent shopping trolleys in use throughout Germany. The system, marketed under the name Smart Shopper, is equipped with a tablet PC, the so-called ScanBox.
With the connected barcode scanner, customers can register their goods while shopping. For control purposes, it has a weighing unit built in above the wheels. Using an intelligent algorithm, the system compares the weight of the scanned products with the values stored in the master data. For the checkout, the device generates a QR code. This is used to transfer the shopping basket to the checkout for payment, which is also possible at one of the store’s four self-checkouts.
The shopping trolley itself comes from the production of development and sales partner Expresso Germany. Edeka retailer Max Aschhoff is one of the founders of KBST. He has been successfully using the SmartShopper in his Kassel store since October 2020. For this project, EHI Retail Institute honoured him with the Retail Technology Award Reta at this year’s EuroShop. The Retail Optimiser reported.
Edeka Group goes for smart trolleys
In the meantime, more than 130 stores across Germany within Edeka group have introduced the intelligent shopping trolley from KBST, among them stores owned by the national or regional Edeka groups, independent shop owners as well as 13 stores of the group’s discount operation Netto. As Jan Kraus, Managing Director at KBST, told Retail Optimiser, the company has installed more than 2,000 systems at the group to date, two thirds of which have integrated scales. KBST is in talks with six of the seven Edeka regional companies and expects to have approximately 2500 SmartShoppers installed in around 150 stores by the end of this year. Edeka Minden-Hannover uses more than 6,000 systems from competitor Pentland Firth in about 160 of its stores.
With the intelligent shopping trolleys, Edeka regional companies want to spare their customers waiting times at the checkout and offer them a better shopping experience. While the customer always remains comprehensively informed about his purchase via the large-surface display, the retailer is offered a wide range of possibilities to address customers. However, the advantages of the system mainly come into play with large shopping baskets. They are therefore less of an alternative than a useful addition to self-checkout.
