Rewe Group has equipped a significantly larger supermarket in Berlin with Trigo’s scanless technology. The retail group has been testing the system in a Cologne store since May 2021. Soon, all customers in the reopened supermarket in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district will be able to shop without having their goods scanned. In June 2021, Rewe Group had participated in the financing of Trigo.
Rewe Group’s second Pick&Go supermarket at Schönhauser Allee 130 in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district is twice as large and has three times the assortment as the store in Cologne’s Zeppelinstraße, which is equipped with Trigo technology. Both outlets are operated in hybrid mode: Shoppers can also choose to pay at conventional checkouts.
In the Rewe supermarket in Berlin, the retailer’s employees and their relatives are currently testing shopping using vision recognition technology, which completely eliminates the need for scanning the goods. In late summer, the technology will be available to all customers. During the conversion of the store, six kilometres of high-speed network cable had to be laid in the branch for the Pick&Go technology, in addition to a vast number of cameras and shelf sensors.
Shoppers sees receipt only after leaving the store
Purchases made with Trigo’s Pick&Go technology are automatically settled with the customers via the app not before they have left the store. Currently, real-time creation of the electronic shopping basket on the app while shopping is with Trigo technology not possible. “We are still working on making the picked goods visible more quickly,” said Michael Gabay, co-founder and CEO of Trigo, when asked by Retail Optimiser at the EuroCIS trade fair.
The second Rewe store with Trigo technology has a sales area of around 400 square metres with a range of around 10,000 items, deposit machines and other areas that will be connected to the Pick&Go system for the first time. In future, fruit and vegetables will not be charged by the unit price in the store but will be offered as weighed goods.
Rewe Group emphasises that the images captured from customers do not conflict with the protection of personal data. The system only collects data to recognise which products are taken or put back. It neither works with facial recognition nor can the system recognise customers after a visit to the store.
