Anyone who’s ever gone grocery shopping before knows the struggle of a long checkout. After all that work, the copious amounts of energy exerted in picking the perfect apple, the pressure of selecting the right amount of ground beef, and deciding whether it’s a prudent financial decision to buy a family-sized box of Oreos all for oneself, all while schlepping a shopping cart all around the store, the last thing anyone still wants to do is stand in a line for who knows how long, unload all the groceries that were so perfectly placed in the cart onto the checkout station, and have to put it all back in again. Startup company Grabango thinks they have found a solution, an app that flips the grocery world upside down.
“Rediscover the joy of shopping”
According to Grabango, the average human spends nearly 33 days of their lives waiting in grocery store lines. The whole concept is rather outdated, with the last significant update way back in the seventies with the barcode. With a revolutionary approach in mind, Grabango seeks to change this. According to their website, the free service can be offered by grocery stores to customers who scan groceries while they shop by bringing “computer vision and machine learning to existing brick-and-mortar stores,” enabling consumers to “rediscover the joy of shopping.”
How does one Grabango?
Here’s a detailed look at how it works. First, according to the website, “when you visit a Grabango-enabled store, as you browse items throughout the store, the system keeps track of what you pick up,” this data is stored in the shopper’s app to be used at checkout. Grabango says no facial recognition technology is used and data is “anonymized” to protect user privacy. Then, “when you’re ready to leave, instead of looking for the shortest line, skip the lines altogether. Scan the code in your Grabango app and payment is automatic.” A shopper’s receipt will be stored in the app, saving the hassle of having little papers all over the place and providing the comfort of easy access.
A promising partnership
Founded in 2016, Grabango has been making serious strides in a relatively short period. Just under two years ago, it announced a partnership with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Giant Eagle, a grocery juggernaut that owns several other brands that operate all around the United States, including GetGo and Market District. “We built Grabango knowing that shopping would be better without the lines. Now in stores, it’s fantastic how many people have made us a natural part of their everyday routine. It’s gratifying to see that when you make something better, adoption happens quickly. We’re seeing it flourish at Giant Eagle,” said Grabango CEO Will Glaser. “Grabango’s commercial deployment with (Giant Eagle) is only the beginning, and consumers can expect Grabango’s checkout-free technology to be widely available in the near future,” he added.
According to Grabango, these announcements and the service’s increasingly wide adoption “marks the beginning of a new era,” an era of streamlined experiences and simplified interactions. The Grabango app is available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
YouTube: This Startup Looks To Challenge Amazon In Checkout-less Store Sector
Photo Credit: The featured images are owned by Grabango and have been provided for press usage.
