EUen Fullam (right) shows her sou Danny (carter), t, and Patrick, 7, bow to pUoe * doU order it the Super Stop It Shop m Bralntro*, Ibu.

High-tech grocery checkoutCheckout: Do-it-yourself technology isadvancing rapidlythrough the retail world.

By ANDRKW RATKKK•DM »TArr

BRAINTREE, Mail. — Justback from a family vacation atDisney World and needing toreplenish her pantry, EllenFullam entered a Super Stop& Shop near her home In thisBoston suburb last week andordered American cheesefrom the dell counter.

Nothing remarkable aboutthat — except that Fullamwas dozens of yards from thedell counter when she or-dered. And when her cheesewas ready, she was alerted bya flat-screen computer on hershopping cart while she wasperusing another aisle. Hersmart cart knew everythingshe has ever bought at a Stop& Shop, precisely where thewas Inside the store and therunning total other bill.

When she finished, shecould pay her bill by herselfwithout removing a productfrom the cart.

"It's quick. It's easy. It's Justanother new technologythough. Things are alwayschanging* Fullam said mat-ter-of-factly. a 35-year-oldteacher and waitress with herpoliceman husband and sonsIn tow.

Is this the future of groceryshopping, or all shopping forthat [See Checkout, Sol

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B U S I N E S S The Sun: Sunday, May 4,2003: Page 5D

"Usually, I'm running around asking, 'Do you know where this is?' But it has this global^positwning-tgpe system that findsthings and tells you if you're getting warmer. When I found what I was looking for, it was so exciting."

Smart carts speed up shopping trip[Checkout. JTom Page ID\

matter?Like It or not, do-It-yourself

technology Is advancing rapidlythrough the retail and serviceworlds. Airline passengers nowcheck themselves la at airportkiosks. Casinos are Installingcashless slot machines (romwhich players collect their win-nings electronically without acoin clinking And libraries havebegun using radio-frequencysystems so their patrons cancheck out stacks at books prac-tically without breaking strideat '.he exit. Invention's mother Isnecessity, but one of her chil-dren Is named ::<::'• .J vr.-p- •-.

Nowhere is this trend moreprevalent than In supermarket*,and large warehouse-typestores, whose managers struggleto find and keep cashiers andwhere long lines gave birth lathe term "register rage' Shop-pers In one survey consideredgrocery shopping Just above vis-Its to the dentlsL

A billion self-serve transac-tions were made In the UnitedSlates last year, up (rom 520million In 2001 and 320 million In2000, according to Industry ana-lysts. Self-checkout systems, inonly B percent of grocery storesis recently as 1999. are now Inalmost one-third or the 32.000supermarkets In the country, de-fined by making at least S2 mil-lion Ln annual sales.

•I don't know that any of usdebate whether It's appropriatefor groceries any more. It's anovernight success, 10 to 15 yeanin the making." said Jeff Roster.an analyst at Gartner Inc.. anInformation technology researchand consulting firm.

Consumen do not universallyembrace the change. Some doeverything they can to avoidself-checkout lanes at groceriesand complain that they're beinguktrd to do the work of cashiers.The machines seem balky attimes and some users get flus-tered as a line of annoyed fellowshoppers backs up behind them.

Checkout technology hasn'tso mystified and conqueredsince President Oeorge H.W.Bush reportedly expressedama?«ment at a common super-market scanner in 1992, fuelingremarks that he seemed out oftouch.

But checkout automation IsImproving, a big reaton thatconsumers are seeing more of IL .

Mew modal* oajlorUnlike the earliest models de-

veloped in the 1980s, the latestmodels accept various forms ofpayment. Including checks.Touch screens and video anima-tion have made the machinesseem less threatening to users,now very accustomed topumping their own gas andbonking by machine.

Developers such as OptimalRoboUcs of Montreal arc experi-menting with new configura-tions that lake up less space

Items clogging up the conveyorbelt. And cheaper machines andIncreasing tabor coats are mak-ing retailers take a second lookIf they believe they can recoupthe coct In 18 to 24 months. Aset of four self-iervlce lanescosts about 5100.000 to 9200.000.

Baltimore and the rest of themid-Atlantic are relative late-comer* to the technology. Inparts of Europe, It ha* beencommon for years. Self-service Isalso well-established In the Mid-west and South.

Some experts believe that Isbecause those regions are hometo Kroger Co. of Cincinnati andPubllx Super Markets Inc. ofLakeland, Fla.. chain grocersthat pioneered the systems' usein the United Stales, and NCRCorp.. the Dayton. Ohio, com-pany that made the first me-chanical cash register 120 yeanago.

But others see another con-nection: Political support Tor or-ganized labor, which perceives•elf-service as a threat. 'Look atthe Bush vs Core map and theBush areas are where T.J-.-I ofthe chains started self-check-out," said Oreg Buzek, a retailtechnology consultant in Ten-nessee.

He noted that California andthe Northeast, birthplaces ofmajor Innovations In computingbut also politically liberal andpro-union, have been slower toadopt the technology.

The Labor Department In a2000 report acknowledged theUse of self-service technologybui didn't foresee a heavy bite inthe demand for cashiers. Thereare about 3.4 million of them,about one-third working in foodstores.

This is an emerging Issue Insmall markets and big markets.It's a challenge for us,* said JUICashen of the United Food ttCommercial Workers Interna-

allow wives to e-mail shoppinglists to their husbands on"Shopping Buddy.' although re-quiring the husband to buy onlythe listed Items may be beyondtechnology's reach.)

shoplifting — the fint Questionman; ; the

Produce price* mud be entered manually on the "Shopping Buddy." Thethat enters the price Into the computer. Most Items arc scanned by the

on a wale, which Is scanned by a devicea detachable scanner smaller than a cell phone.

tlonal Union In Washington.Cashiers represented by theunion earn about 111 an hourand at Northeast chains such asStop tt Shop as much as lie anhour, plus benefits. The averagecashier wage Is 97 an hour.

Fat* of coahloraPredictions of doom (or cash-

ten may be oventated, though.If the experience of self-serviceautomation In banking Is aguide.

The number of U.S. tellers hasremained flat at roughly 85.000since 1990. even while ATMtransactions doubled, to 14 bil-lion last year. ATMs altered be-havton and led customers tobank more often, said John Hall,a spokesman for the AmericanBanking Association In Wash-ington. But given the rise Intransactions and middle-classwealth. It's also arguable thatthe macrur.es. which have quad-rupled In availability to nearry350.000. kept financial Institu-tions from having to hire tellersto keep up with the growth.

Some experts believe sel f -service checkouts will becomemore used and useful with re-finements in radio-frequencyIdentification systems, being de-veloped most prominently at theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology. Already In wide useat toll booths and for credit pur-chases at Exxon Mobil gas sta-tions, so-called H M D systemscan check out a cart full of ItemsIn an Instant without removingone.

Such a system Is already inuse at a grocer In South Africa.An IBM Corp. commercial of-fered a humorous gUmpse of thefuture, depleting a shoplifter be-ing handed his receipt, unawarethat his concealed goods hadbeen charged 10 Ms account byRF1D tags. But the price of thetags will have to drop 10-fold, topennies apiece, to make the ben-efit worth the expense on amass scale, some expert* agree.

One of the more Intriguing(elf-serve experiments In theUnited States Is at a marketowned by Stop it Shop Super-market Co. The New Englandsupermarket chain shares thesame Dutch parent company.Royal Ahold NV. as five otherU.S. supermarkei chains, includ-ing Olant Pood Inc. In Maryland.

A month ago. Stop & shoplaunched 'Shopping Buddy" atIts large store In Bralntree, amiddle-class suburb at thesouth end of Boston's T* com-muter rail.

At the store's entrance, a rackholds about 60 devices that looklike Industrial-strength Etch-A-Sketch toys.

Shoppen daring enough totry the device, developed bySymbol Technologies Inc. ofLong island, N Y . and CueSol, ashopping software developer innearby Qulncy. mount it In spe-cially designed handle* on theircarts. Customen swipe theirfrequent shopper card" in themachine — or borrow a genericcard from the service counter.

What cuslomen don't see Isas remarkable as what they do.The tablets transmit a wirelesssignal to CueSol'* computerserven a few miles away. Fromthere the connection move* overfiber-optic lines to Ahold'smainframe In Greenville. S.C..where the customer* shopping

history and account Is stored.The information then returns toBralntree via the Internet to the'Shopping Buddy* devices onthe shopping cart.

The process take* less than 2

Because of wireless transmit-ters affixed to the celling of thesupermarket, the machine-equipped cart always "knows"Us location In the store. If a cus-tomer's history Indicates thatshe favors a certain brand oforange juice, the machine screenwill alert her to a sale on It whenshe nean the refrigerated sec-tion. If she can't find a product,a quick computer search on hercart screen will locate the ttemand even display a store map toshow how close the'* getting a*she walks toward the Item.

Usen can order dell productswith the "Shopping Buddy"touch screen and even specifywhether they prefer their bolo-gna thick or thin. A screenprompt alerts when the order isready.

And with a detachable scan-ner. smaller and lighter than

most cell phones, shoppen canscan their items and get a run-ning sum as they drop them inthe cart. If they've alreadyplaced bags In the cart, they cancheck out with the scanner andpay for their Items without re-moving anything from the bas-ket.

This Is so much easier," saidElizabeth Murphy, 38. as her9-year-old son. Evan, "blasted"bar codes for her with the re-portedly kid-proof scanning tool

"Usually, I'm running aroundasking 'Do you know where thisis?' but It has this global-posi-tioning type system that findsthlnp and tells you If you're get-ting wanner. When 1 found what1 was looking tor. It was so excit-ing.* ihe said.

*I hope thl* Is going to becoming down to the Cape," saidElaine Manton, a 59-year-oldCape Cod resident visiting her

ready to play yet, however. Ofroughly 13,000 shoppers in thestore each week, about 3,000 areusing the "Shopping Buddy"and maybe 2,000 of them are us-ing it to check out al Ihe end.said Mike Oiimes, vice presl-denl of sale* and markellng forCucSoL

Shoppers ploosodStop tt Bhop has been qulel

about the rollout, with some In-store promotion only, but thechain Ls pleased wtth how cus-tomera have responded so far.Some shoppers have told man-agers they even spend a UUlemore while using the devices be-cause they can tell how closethey are to their budget limit.

Grimes said CueSol also tooksome cue* from general com-plaints about the Internet, nowawash In annoying "spam" and

Jumbo lemons, she decided toput one back and with Ihe scan-ner erased the second entry.•It's like a toy "

Most customers here aren't

failed "video" shopping cart sys-tems In Ihe 1990s, nor attemptto convert shoppen from theirtypical brands. {CueSol Is alsoworking on a version that would

"Shopping Buddy."Shoppen get "scored" by the

computer the first time they useIt so the machine has a basis forfuture patterns, such as howmuch time an individual typi-cally takes in a particular aisle.Grimes said Closed-circuit tele-vision cameras also monitorshoppers the old-fashioned way.through surveillance. Conven-tional self-checkout systemscheck theft by matching theweight of the Items on the con-veyor belt with the weight of theItems scanned and flagging dis-crepancies.

if such systems Increase"shrink" — retailers' euphemismfor shoplifting — that will betheir demise. Kmart Corp.. forone. blamed Its self-checkoutaisles for contributing to shop-lifting and asked last month tobe excused from Us contractwith the supplier In Its bank-ruptcy case.

But some grocery executivesand analyst* contend self-serv-ice checkout has reduced an-other form of theft: "sweet-hearting" by cashiers who letfr iends get away without payingtheir full bill

And system developers arefinding ever new ways to combattemptation. At NCR, research-en discovered that people re-spond with more alarm to a re-corded male voice than to a fe-male one. They reserve the malerecording Ln self-service lanesfor limes when the machine de-tects a problem or securitythreat, said Mlchad R. Webster.vice president and general man-ager of NCR's FfcstLane division.

Long-standing fears aboutpitfalls, however, appear to beyielding to a belief that the tech-nology can Improve efficiency.convenience and even competi-tive advantage.

"If you look at a target shop-p e r — a mom. a busy mom —anything you can do to makemom's experience easier, there'*a benefit that binds." aaM RickStockwood, a Stop tt Shopspokesman. "How many people

rocked the vtdeocaueu« world?People are more accustomed tothis. In the grocery business,technology and convenience cango hand In hand."

People behind the new technology - and a critic

Industry expert* believe that self-service

Ing gum — either Wrlgley's Spearmint orJuicy Fruit, historical account* conflict —was swept over a laser scanner at a grocerIn Troy. Ohio, 29 years ago.

That Introduced the Universal ProductCode to shopping. greaUy increasing the va-riety of goods a store could hope to trackand inventory.

Here are a few people behind the newtechnology — and one pushing back:

Tho InventorDavid R. Humble was waiting In a grocery

checkout line in a Florida supermarket 19yean ago when a moment struck him thatmay change the face of shopping,

A customer ahead ofhim was so agitated by

the entrepreneur. Humble concocted anInternet dieting service Inatead.

'I thought it would have taken off taster.^^ (l dw- the (T-year-okl Inventor said of

«»* aaopten.

Humble

lion, he grabbed one ofhis items and swiped llover the scanner him-self. The cashier got themessage. Humble got athought. Why not allowa customer to always dothat?"It was so simple* he

said. He returned to hisJob al a manufacturer of electronic tecuritytag* for clothing, toyed with prototype* andeventually formed CheckRobol Inc.

He cobbled together an industrial com-puter, a penonal computer and a videoscreen — U.S. patent 4.904.033 — andshopped it to a few grocery chains. PufallxSuper Market* Inc. bought ihe first one fora store near Atlanta,

Like many inventon, Humble apparentlywas ahead of his time. His equipment,weaker and slower than computers today,cost twice as much as conventional check-outs at the time. They didn't speed theproceu enough because customen stul hadto pay a central cashier after bagging theirgoods. His machine didn't accept cash orchecks, and debit cards were still a* uncom-mon In supermarket* as coftee ban.

CheckRobol was eveniually sold to acompany In Europe, where self-serve check-out Is more common and advanced. Ever

Steve Walker, Home Depot store maiuuref.

Tho retailorEspecially on the weekends, when "honey-

do" lists abound. Steve Walker would occa-sionally Find stray, partly full cart* near thefront of the Home Depot store he managesIn Bel Air.

It wns a telltale sign — and a retailer*nightmare — that a customer took the timeto visit and shop at his store but couldn'tbear the wait to complete the purchase.

Thai was reason enough for Walker u>welcome the four self-checkout allies In-stalled thl* spring at his store, one of thechain'* busiest In the mld-AUanllc. HomeDepot plans to add about 3.000 of the ma-chines In about half of Its 1.600 stores thisyear.

"It's been a iremendous addition." Walkersaid. "When we Rnl Installed It, customenwho had had a bad experience with self-checkout elsewhere were hesitant, but onceIhey gol over that. It has been well received.*

Although studies have found that con-sumers often process a checkout slowerthan trained cashlen, customers tclicicthey do It faster — and In retail, the cus-

tomer Is always rightHome Depot executives think their sys-

tem offers a competitive edge against therising No. 2 chain. Lowe* Companies Inc.Lowe's said through a spokeswoman ll hasno plans to add self-servke checkout.

"We've learned a lot from the grocerystore experience," said John Simley, aspokesman at Home Depot's headquartenIn AtlanU, "A bag of concrete Is Just like anorange. You only have a certain amount oflime to sell it, so It'* all aboul moving prod-uct qulckty across the register."

Tho criticPaul McFedrles. a Toronto author, writes

some of the "Complete Idiot's Guides" tocomputer subjects, so he doesn't view him-self as a foe of technology or even of idiots.but he does see some Idiocy In the conceptof self-service checkout.

The lerm remindshim of "bowling alone,"a phrase coined byRobert Putnam In a1B83 article about theIncrease in bowling inthe United States evenas the number of bowl-ing leagues declined.

"Soon you'll nevereven have to talk toanybody." UcFedrleisaid. 'Now, It1* kind offun to banter with the cashier, but In five or10 yean ... well. 1 haven't bantered with abank teller in who knows how long."

McFedrles, who also produces a vocabu-lary Web site called wordspy.com. Is per-plexed thai consumen believe lhat trans-acting business with a machine is more pri-vate.

In fact, "data shadows" of penonal creditand consumer histories are blooming everlarger Some self-serve technology In use of-fers electronic promotions and discountsbased on a shoppers history and habit*.

"Any little thing thai will save them limeseems to be a good thing, but If you took atwhat we are giving up," McFedrles said, *20yean from now. our lives will be open booksand all the data bases will talk to eachother.

"My philosophy has always been you needto know technology In order to control tech-nology. Otherwise. It will control you*

HcFedrfe*