Retailers are altering the self-checkout process

If you have a toddler whose favorite phrase is “I can do it myself!”, you may want to tread lightly at Dollar General. The retailer recently announced that it’ll be eliminating self-checkout at 300 locations over the next six months, in addition to revamping its policies related to customers who like to… do it themselves.

Here is what’s changing at Dollar General’s 14,000+ stores with self-checkout:

• The self-checkout registers in ~9,000 of those stores will become "assisted checkout options."
• Self-checkout purchases in the remaining Dollar General stores will be limited to five items or less.

Shrink and efficiency are behind the moves. “Shrink” – a term for what happened to Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig in Downsizing and also what retailers use to refer to lost inventory due to theft, weather, errors, etc. – is the biggest driver behind Dollar General’s elimination of self checkout. In last Thursday’s earnings call, CEO Todd Vasos revealed that those 300 locations were the most impacted by theft and inventory loss.

And, speaking on the moves more broadly, he said: “This is intended to drive traffic first to our staffed registers, with assisted checkout options available as second or third options to reduce lines during high volume times.”

Other retailers are also revamping self-checkout. Target implemented a new policy this week that limits customers going through self-checkout to 10 items or less, while Walmart is empowering its individual store managers to experiment with different ways to use its self-checkout lanes.