When it came time for the Y-Not Stop team members to decide what app features they wanted and who could provide them, they decided three was better than one. The Mansura, La.-based chain, owned by St. Romain Oil, worked with a small collection of companies to power its app: Skip Checkout for self-scan, Vroom Delivery for food ordering and Rovertown for the app creation itself. Together, the Y-Not Scan system allows customers to scan items on their phone and then pay and walk out of the store with those items without ever visiting the cash register. Amanda St. Romain, marketing director for St. Romain Oil, says when the store launched the mobile checkout feature, some people thought she would be robbed blind. But that hasn’t been a problem so far, she says.

“Why would someone go through the trouble of downloading an app and giving me their name, their email address, their phone number and their credit card information to try to steal things?” she says. “If somebody’s going to steal a candy bar, they’re going to steal a candy bar. They’re not going to download an app to do it.”

When someone using Y-Not Scan enters the store, a tablet at the front of the store dings to alert employees that someone is using the technology and it gives employees real-time updates on what that customer is picking up and buying.