Anyone who has ever shopped at a Wegmans knows the chain is serious about moving customers quickly through its checkouts. Managers stationed at the front-end keep an eye on the queues and are quick to open a checkout or point shoppers to lanes that will reduce their wait time. What you haven't seen at Wegmans are self-checkouts; but that may be about to change. Wegmans announced that it is testing self-checkouts at a store in Penfield, NY.
Jo Natale, a spokesperson for Wegmans, told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, "We were never in a rush to introduce self-checkout. We had never seen one we liked or offered features for customer convenience."
Wegmans decided to test self-checkouts at the request of customers from other states where self-checkouts are more common than in New York. The chain chose the Penfield store, which will have four self-checkout lanes, because of its proximity to Wegmans' headquarters.
Bob Boehner, a visiting professor of marketing at the Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology, said the self-checkouts were intended to build on Wegmans' customer service model "by giving shoppers another option."
"For those customers who want convenience and speed, they can use the self-checkout," Prof. Boehner told the Democrat & Chronicle. "For those customers who like to interact with Wegmans ... they still have the option of regular checkout."
Chris Evans, a customer at the Penfield store, said he liked the self-checkout, but offered a caveat. "I don't want it to replace a breadwinner's salary. It would go against what Wegmans represents in the community."
Discussion Questions: Do self-checkouts run counter to Wegmans' image for customer service? Will Wegmans' test become a chain-wide rollout? Will all grocers, perhaps all retailers, eventually have self-checkouts in their stores?