PITTSBURGH — GetGo Cafe and Market, the convenience-store arm of grocer Giant Eagle, is launching checkout-free technology from Grabango. The first Giant Eagle location to make Grabango available is a GetGo store in Fox Chapel, Pa., which serves the greater Pittsburgh area.
To get started, shoppers download the free Grabango app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Once shoppers have the app, they may enter the store and shop normally. There is no check-in required or turnstile. When they are finished in the store, shoppers scan the code in their Grabango app on the way out. Afterwards, they receive a digital receipt in the app.
“Together, Giant Eagle, GetGo and Grabango are offering new levels of convenience by solving everyone’s No. 1 frustration—waiting in checkout lines,” said Will Glaser, CEO of Grabango. “Checkout-free convenience has arrived, and we’re so proud to be offering it with Giant Eagle.”
The system was installed without any interruption to store operations and it does not use facial recognition, according to Grabango.
“We’re excited to bring checkout-free technology to our Pittsbrurgh-area shoppers. With Grabango, our GetGo guests are able to get in, get out and get going even faster with a more convenient, contactless shopping experience,” said Laura Karet, president and CEO of Giant Eagle. “We look forward to success at our Fox Chapel GetGo and to rolling out more Grabango-powered convenience and grocery stores in the near future.”
The upgrade of the Fox Chapel GetGo unit comes less than a month after Alimentation Couche-Tard announced it is working with autonomous checkout provider Standard Cognition and with Mastercard to retrofit selected Circle K stores with no-checkout tech.
Berkeley, Calif.-based Grabango is a provider of checkout-free technology for existing, large-scale store chains. The Grabango platform is a network that processes millions of simultaneous transactions. The system places no limits on who can enter the store, what can be sold there or how the shelving is configured. Grabango was founded in 2016 by Will Glaser, who is also a co-founder of Pandora Media.
Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle operates 175 corporate and 54 independently owned and operated supermarkets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. It has approximately 220 GetGo c-stores in several states, as well as nearly 60 Ricker's c-stores in Indiana. Giant Eagle’s Convenience Division is No. 30 on CSP’s 2020 Top 202 list of c-stores by store count.
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