Sam’s Club Is Opening New Location With Exactly Zero Checkout Counters

The shopping experience is infused with more technology than ever.

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Since 1983, American shoppers have had not one but two warehouse clubs vying for their membership: Costco, the third-largest retailer in the world, and Sam’s Club, owned and operated by Walmart. Sam’s Club operates 599 locations nationwide, but a new store opening in Texas will be the first to entirely remove checkout counters in order to streamline the shopping experience.

Grocery Dive reports that a new Sam’s Club opening next week in Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, will have no checkout counters. Instead, the store will direct shoppers to its Scan & Go app , where the user scans the items in their cart and walks out with them, having charged the items to a payment method stored in the app.

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This process is designed to speed up shopping trips for customers — yet although it increases convenience by letting shoppers skip the line, it’s not entirely a benevolent measure. Grocery Dive explains that by streamlining each visit, Sam’s Club can help cater to a rising segment of customers: those who only want to stop in for one or two things on a regular basis, versus a whole massive cartful of bulk items purchased more sporadically.

“That mobile checkout experience isn’t just to remove friction at checkout,” former Walmart executive Jordan Berke told Grocery Dive. “It’s to create inspiration as the member walks the club. What Sam’s Club is doing so well is adding value digitally to every member who’s using the app when she’s in-store.”

The Scan & Go technology is already in use at Sam’s Club stores nationwide, and Grocery Dive notes that CEO Chris Nicholas says about 30% of customers regularly use this option while shopping. Meanwhile, about half of customers are “digitally engaged” with the brand, whether that means using Scan & Go or making online purchases. As to the latter, the new Grapevine location will use the space where the checkout counters typically stand as a spot to advertise online exclusive products, thereby driving even more digital engagement.

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If it sounds like Scan & Go could be misused for theft, there’s still a layer of vetting that goes on, even if people don’t have to move through checkout lines. The exits are equipped with AI-assisted scanning technology , which makes sure the items in the cart match the ones that were paid for.

This latest attempt to remove “pain points” from the grocery shopping experience joins innovations like Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology and Instacart’s Caper Carts , which has sensors that scan and weigh items and a checkout system located right in the cart. All of these developments, notably, are updates on the in-store shopping experience, not its online equivalent. Post-pandemic, customers have made it clear to retailers that they are often still attached to the act of physically selecting groceries for themselves, as much as they’re able, rather than awaiting home or curbside delivery. Sam’s Club’s new emphasis on Scan & Go allows shoppers to customize their in-store experience, whether they want to spend a lot or a little time on site.

A trip to Sam’s Club “feels much more like a grocery trip that then is augmented with really good quality [general merchandise] and really good quality treasure hunt items that we hope you buy because you’re passing them as you shop,” said CEO Chris Nicholas.

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