BALTIMORE — High’s has begun installation of Skip Frictionless Checkout in 36 locations, a process scheduled to be completed by the end of May.
Skip allows customers to purchase items by scanning barcodes using their smartphones without visiting a cashier in-store. The app is available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. High’s is the first convenience-store chain in Baltimore to adopt a form of frictionless checkout.
“Skip Frictionless Checkout is a key first piece in our digital platform moving forward,” said Noah Sanders, High's senior analytics and implementation manager. “It will enhance our customers’ in-store experience along with the reboot of the High’s loyalty program and mobile app, coming soon.”
Skip notifies store associates when a customer using the app enters the store, allowing the associate to monitor their purchases during the visit.
Salt Lake City-based Skip implements a system in stores that allows customers to scan items with their mobile devices as they take them from the shelves. Store associates are notified when a Skip user arrives and can monitor their purchases in real time. Once a customer scans all of their purchases, they finalize payment in the app and leave, avoiding waiting in line. Shortly after Bloomberg indicated Amazon might look to open 3,000 Amazon Go locations by 2021, Skip Checkout announced within days that it plans to do the same—by the end of 2019.
Baltimore-based High’s began as an ice cream chain in the Mid-Atlantic states, with as many as 500 locations. In 2012, Carrol Independent Fuel Co. acquired High’s. Today, the chain includes 48 c-stores. High's is No. 144 on CSP's 2018 Top 202 ranking of c-store chains by total number of company-owned retail outlets.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.