Retail technology innovation of the week: REWE Group and Trigo take autonomous shopping to next level
Retail Technology Innovation of the Week is a new series brought to you by RTIH and sponsored by 3D Cloud by Marxent, highlighting stand out deployments, launches, and initiatives by retailers and tech suppliers.
Every week, we will showcase forward thinking tech plays that have impressed our Editor and the Retail Technology Innovations Report judging panel, alongside the publication of the 2024 report.
So far, we’ve flagged up sterling work being done by Ocado Retail, Decathlon, Lacoste, Downtown Spirits, TalkShopLive, Huck’s, Rovertown, Wing, Nobody’s Child, IKI, Pixevia, Walmart, A.L.C., Archive, Therabody, Outform, Kingfisher, PMC, Boots UK, Ocula Technologies, Grace O'Malley Irish Whiskey, Metacask, Ikea, Carrefour Belgium, Matalan, and McDonald’s.
And this week we’re focusing on REWE Group and Trigo.
Christoph Eltze, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at German grocery giant, REWE Group, has taken to social media to discuss the retailer’s Pick&Go store format landing in Düsseldorf, Germany, and how this marks the start of a new test phase for its autonomous shopping experience.
In a LinkedIn post, he said: “This is because we are constantly working on responding more and more flexibly to the needs of our customers, including with our Pick&Go innovation. For the first time in Düsseldorf, we are relying on the principle of four wins.”
Customers in Düsseldorf can decide at the exit of the store which shopping route they want to take, choosing between four options:
Cashierless payment via the Pick&Go app; manual scanning of products at the self-checkout terminal; payment at the conventional tape cash register; or payment at self-checkout terminals with computer vision support, which eliminates the need for scanning.
Eltze said: “Computer vision-based shopping at the self-checkout terminal is a real game changer: For the first time, we enable our customers to display a virtual shopping cart at the self-checkout terminal – while they are still in the store.”
“This works with the tried and tested Pick&Go technology, which was previously reserved exclusively for Pick&Go app users. Now all customers benefit from the technology and can shop and pay even more flexibly and according to their individual wishes.”
REWE Group has put check-out at the self-checkout terminal through its paces in Berlin and Düsseldorf and will also soon move this into its autonomous Pick&Go store in Munich.
It is also looking at making it possible to display the virtual shopping cart during shopping in the Pick&Go app. This gives app users an even better overview of their cashierless purchase.
Eltze concluded: “It is clear that even with projects that have enormous innovation potential right from the start, we do not tire and use the knowledge gained from the previous test phases to further develop and help shape the procurement of the future.”
“Finally, a big thank you goes to the Pick&Go project team and to our colleagues in the Düsseldorf market who are accompanying the new Pick&Go test phase live on site.”
“You guys are doing a great job! We would also like to thank our partner Trigo for providing us with the necessary computer vision technology for Pick&Go.”
In addition to REWE, Trigo’s solutions have been deployed with Tesco in the UK, Aldi Nord in The Netherlands, Netto Marken-Discount (also known as Netto) in Munich, Israel’s Shufersal, and Wakefern Food Corp., the largest retailer owned cooperative in the US.
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