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Frictionless retail can help Ahold Delhaize USA go where it hasn’t gone before

‘Lunchbox’ cashierless store concept could become new service offering

Russell Redman

January 14, 2020

5 Min Read
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Ahold Delhaize USA's Retail Business Services demonstrated its "lunchbox" frictionless store concept at the NRF Retail's Big Show event in Manhattan.Russell Redman

Since a late 2019 U.S. pilot of its “lunchbox” frictionless retail concept, Ahold Delhaize USA sees possibilities for the technology that stretch beyond its own stores, facilities and geographic market to other venues and users.

Paul Scorza, executive vice president for IT and CIO at Retail Business Services (RBS), Ahold Delhaize USA’s services arm, discussed the cashierless store format Tuesday with Supermarket News at the NRF 2020 Retail’s Big Show conference in New York.

“Where we think we're going with it, that's what we're working on now,” Scorza said in an interview at a lunchbox demo store in the NRF booth of tech partner Intel. “We believe it would be to places where we don't have a traditional store.”

Offering a curated selection of food and beverages and other groceries, lunchbox enables shoppers to make purchases by scanning in via an RBS mobile app as they enter, selecting items and then walking out. Customers register ahead of time to set up an account to tally transactions and make payment, either through a credit/debit card or digital wallet. Shoppers receive a receipt on their smartphone immediately after exiting the store, which runs 24/7.

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RBS is now piloting two lunchbox stores, at its office in Quincy, Mass., and at a Giant Food Stores distribution center in Carlisle, Pa.

RBS began testing a 150-square-foot lunchbox in November by the cafeteria of its office in Quincy, Mass. Then last week, a 500-square-foot lunchbox launched at a Giant Food Stores distribution center in Carlisle, Pa., which had no cafeteria. Scorza said other sites being considered are alongside the cafeterias at Giant’s Carlisle headquarters and RBS’ home base in Salisbury, N.C. Products in the current lunchbox stores are supplied by the local Ahold Delhaize USA grocery brands: Giant in Carlisle and Stop & Shop in Quincy.

Related:Ahold Delhaize USA pilots Amazon Go-style store

Other potential locations include airport and train stations, office buildings, college campuses, convention centers and gas stations, according to Scorza.

“We're looking to see if we could deploy something like this anywhere in the U.S. and not with our own brand, but possibly with somebody else’s,” he said.

Under such a scenario, RBS would act as a service provider, selling a turnkey frictionless retail solution and support in tandem with its tech partners. And the products sold can go beyond food.

“If we sold it to somebody on the West Coast, it's not going to be our brand. It's going to whatever their supermarket brand is. And by the way, it doesn't have to be grocery. We've actually had interest from some people on other things like computer supplies,” Scorza said, adding that lunchbox also has drawn international interest. “It's the technology. It doesn't matter what you put on the shelf — whatever you want to sell.”

Related:Ahold Delhaize tests new site for autonomous micro store

That includes other food retailers. “You could put it anywhere in the country. A local grocery could buy the technology, put in their own product and fulfill it themselves,” he said.

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Cameras help track products being removed and returned to the shelf.

In terms of size, RBS expects lunchbox stores to typically be several hundred square feet, but the concept could be scaled much bigger.

“The store sizes we’ve highlighted are 300 to 450 square feet,” said Kenneth Bolick, senior director of innovation and enterprise mobility at RBS. “The underlying technology is being used in stores in Asia that go up to about 2,000 square feet, and there are some brands not within the Ahold Delhaize USA family that are looking at up to 10,000 square feet.”

RBS partnered with systems integrator UST Global to develop the store, which uses autonomous store technology from Intel solutions partner CloudPick. Products removed from shelves are detected by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, IoT devices and sensors, and edge computing optimized with the Intel CloudPick OpenVINO toolkit. Anonymous body skeletal tracking connects the products taken to the shopper who removed them from the shelf.

“We've gone into two [RBS] offices in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to provide their team members with quick, grab-and-go lunch items, snacks and beverages that normally they wouldn't be able to get without having to stand in the for checkout,” said James Margrave, senior business analyst at UST Global. “So we were able to deploy in those offices by using some of their existing technology within their retail application and by integrating some simple configurations within the store, between the motion detection cameras looking at the detection of each item and weight sensors in the shelves. All three of those configurations work into the algorithm so that you can get your receipt within seconds of walking out the door.”

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Customers enter by scanning a QR code in a mobile app.

Robert Schrupp, an RBS software engineer who was part of the lunchbox development team, gave a demonstration of the store concept in Intel’s NRF booth.

“We have weighted shelves to determine when an item is picked up or put down,” Schrupp said. “We have motion sensors that detect when someone is reaching into a shelf and walking about the store, as well as visual cameras that this was the oatmeal that I picked up versus the fruit cup.”

A big plus for the lunchbox frictionless retail concept is efficient deployment, as a store can be set up in as soon as six weeks.

“It’s tough on the ROI to try to build out a whole store; it’s expensive to do that. So they're going into corporate environments,” said Alec Gefrides, general manager of transactional retail at Intel. “It’s more of a controlled environment, and they’re doing well going down the corporate path.”

About the Author

Russell Redman

Senior Editor
Supermarket News

Russell Redman has served as senior editor at Supermarket News since April 2018, his second tour with the publication. In his current role, he handles daily news coverage for the SN website and contributes news and features for the print magazine, as well as participates in special projects, podcasts and webinars and attends industry events. Russ joined SN from Racher Press Inc.’s Chain Drug Review and Mass Market Retailers magazines, where he served as desk/online editor for more than nine years, covering the food/drug/mass retail sector. 

Russell Redman’s more than 30 years of experience in journalism span a range of editorial manager, editor, reporter/writer and digital roles at a variety of publications and websites covering a breadth of industries, including retailing, pharmacy/health care, IT, digital home, financial technology, financial services, real estate/commercial property, pro audio/video and film. He started his career in 1989 as a local news reporter and editor, covering community news and politics in Long Island, N.Y. His background also includes an earlier stint at Supermarket News as center store editor and then financial editor in the mid-1990s. Russ holds a B.A. in journalism (minor in political science) from Hofstra University, where he also earned a certificate in digital/social media marketing in November 2016.

Russell Redman’s experience:

Supermarket News - Informa
Senior Editor 
April 2018 - present

Chain Drug Review/Mass Market Retailers - Racher Press
Desk/Online Editor 
Sept. 2008 - March 2018

CRN magazine - CMP Media
Managing Editor
May 2000 - June 2007

Bank Systems & Technology - Miller Freeman
Executive Editor/Managing Editor
Dec. 1996 - May 2000

Supermarket News - Fairchild Publications
Financial Editor/Associate Editor
April 1995 - Dec. 1996 

Shopping Centers Today Magazine - ICSC 
Desk Editor/Assistant Editor
Dec. 1992 - April 1995

Testa Communications
Assistant Editor/Contributing Editor (Music & Sound Retailer, Post, Producer, Sound & Communications and DJ Times magazines)
Jan. 1991 - Dec. 1992 

American Banker/Bond Buyer
Copy Editor
Oct. 1990 - Jan. 1991 

This Week newspaper - Chanry Communications
Reporter/Editor
May 1989 - July 1990

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