Diebold Nixdorf (NYSE: DBD), a world leader in transforming the way people shop, has equipped the new EDEKA Beckesepp store in Waltershofen, Germany with self-service checkouts featuring its Smart Vision technology-based solutions for automated fruit and vegetable recognition and age verification. This allows EDEKA Beckesepp to make the checkout process easier for customers while reducing the number of employee interactions required at the self-service checkouts, giving them more time for direct customer service and daily tasks in the store.
With Vynamic® Smart Vision | Fresh Produce Recognition, customers at EDEKA Beckesepp can easily and correctly capture products without barcodes, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, directly at the self-service checkout. A camera placed on top of the scale, combined with sophisticated algorithms, identifies items and their quantities, which is then shown on the display. This eliminates the manual selection of fresh produce for customers or weighing and affixing a price label in the fresh produce section.
The Vynamic® Smart Vision I Age Verification solution allows EDEKA Beckesepp’s customers to automatically check their age. Thus, the purchase of age-restricted items such as alcoholic beverages can be approved at the self-service checkout during the day. When an age-restricted item is scanned, customers are given the option to opt for automatic age recognition. Once consent is given, a camera installed in the system analyzes the customer’s facial characteristics using advanced AI algorithms to determine their age. The transaction can be continued if the customer’s age is above a predefined threshold. The attendants in the store during daytime operations only have to check customers who fall below this age limit or opt out of automatic age recognition. This system is GDPR-compliant as the process does not involve facial recognition, nor does it store images or other customer information.
If customers wish to purchase age-restricted items outside of the daytime opening hours, access to the store happens via an ID card, which then authorizes them to make the purchase.
Johannes Ruf, owner of EDEKA Beckesepp, said: “When planning the new store, it was important for us to fulfill our role as a local supplier and combine customer convenience with optimum staff deployment. While the self-service checkouts also allow us to operate at night, the two AI-based solutions minimize two of the most frequently cited hurdles that customers mention when using self-service solutions: The lengthy search for the right item when registering fresh goods and the personal interaction for the purchase of age-restricted goods.”
The new EDEKA Beckesepp in Waltershofen is located in a combined residential and commercial building. On around 920 square meters, customers are offered a central, inner-city local supply. In addition to daytime operations, the store will operate without staff from 6 p.m. to midnight to allow customers flexible shopping times. Edeka Beckesepp is already planning to equip additional stores with the self-service and AI technology from Diebold Nixdorf.
Leyla Feghhi, head of Retail Sales in the DACH region at Diebold Nixdorf, said: “EDEKA Beckesepp is another excellent example of how our self-checkout and AI technologies support retailers in implementing modern store concepts. Consumers can shop at a time and in a way that suits them best and benefit from a faster and more intuitive process at the self-service checkouts, which makes them less dependent on staff on site. With our first-class services, we also ensure our technology is always ready to use.”
