Amazon Fresh on Tuesday said it will remove its checkout-less system and continue rolling out Dash Carts instead.
The Just Walk Out system will disappear from Amazon’s grocery locations and won’t be included in any upcoming stores this year. The retail giant said the system will be replaced with Dash Carts, which use sensors to track what items customers put in their baskets.
“We’ve also heard from customers that while they enjoyed the benefit of skipping the checkout line with Just Walk Out, they also wanted the ability to easily find nearby products and deals, view their receipt as they shop, and know how much money they saved while shopping throughout the store,” Amazon spokeswoman Carly Golden said of the change.
Just Walk Out launched in 2018. The technology used cameras to track what customers placed in their bags and charged them as they left the stores.
The technology will still be available at some Amazon Fresh stores in the U.K. and Amazon Go convenience stores.
The system began as the pet project of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who wanted to ensure Amazon’s grocery chains stood out from the rest of the industry. While the system appeared to be a futuristic miracle, it was too expensive to maintain as Amazon hired hundreds of overseas workers to check customers as they shopped. As The Information reported last year, the system was expensive for Amazon and it struggled to sell the technology to other companies.
The change coincided with cuts to the company’s Amazon Web Services division. Amazon announced Wednesday that it would be cutting hundreds of jobs from the division’s store technology teams, which oversaw the implementation of the Just Walk Out and Dash Cart systems.
The company said the cuts were made in response to broader changes in technology used in Amazon’s stores.
The shift comes after Amazon paused a nationwide expansion effort for its brick-and-mortar grocery stores while shifting focus to improving its Whole Foods franchises in the U.S.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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