Knott's Berry Farm in southern California is preparing to open a new store inside the park featuring a cashier-less system similar to Amazon Fresh physical stores where you scan a credit card to enter the store and then are charged for whatever items you take with you when you leave the store. The store, which is located near the HangTime roller coaster and Charleston Circle fountain, will feature snacks, bottled drinks, and sunblock.
I would have expected this to be rolled out first at a Disney or Universal theme park. Does anyone know of any similar stores in US theme parks? Do you think this will be a common development in retail in theme parks?
Tweet
Here in the UK the use of self serve tills and others that dispense with checkout staff has been recently reviewed and found to be having a detrimental effect on sales. So much so that a few of our larger stores are responding by re-introducing staffed checkouts in an effort to reverse the downturn in trade.
It was also noted that some of the systems proved to not be as effective in combatting shoplifting as was first hoped.
Outlets are there to make a profit so I'm surprised that any store at the Parks might see this as little more than an experiment that's doomed to failure.
I myself like the interaction with actual people at the checkouts and I'm sure that they like having a job too.
Disney is already testing this concept, and Six Flags (who now owns KBF) had been touting technological advances like this prior to merging with Cedar Fair.
FWIW, Amazon Fresh has been pulling out of this type of operation and gone back to traditional checkouts when it was revealed that the "technology": behind the grab and go model was actually an army of overseas workers reviewing videos and tallying customer orders manually.