This Tampa hospital uses Amazon’s Just Walk Out tech to eliminate cashiers

TAMPA — At 1:16 p.m. on a Tuesday, Richard Sokol taps his badge to enter Season’s Café at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The assistant nurse manager’s lunch break lasts 30 minutes, a precious respite in the midst of his 12- to 14-hour shifts. Each minute is priceless.

Suspended from the ceiling like little digital ornaments are 363 cameras, aimed at every sandwich, baked good and buffet item. They are ready to detect what Sokol selects. He skips the parmesan-crusted chicken, passes the dill-pickle pizza and dino nuggets, and heads toward the open-air merchandisers stocked with ready-to-eat items.

The BayCare hospital unveiled new checkout-free technology in April, becoming the first health care facility cafeteria in the Tampa Bay area to eliminate cashiers. Instead, Season’s Café uses Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which combines artificial intelligence, computer vision and deep-learning techniques to determine everything the buyer selects or puts back. Instead of spending the bulk of their breaks waiting in line, hospital faculty can easily grab what they need.

At 1:17 p.m., one minute and 44 seconds after Sokol entered the cafeteria, an automated exit door swings open to let him out with his lunch. He chose a chipotle chicken ranch wrap and chocolate peanut butter-flavored Muscle Milk. His meal cost $10.75 before tax — but the technology already knew that.

In a high-stress environment, “it’s good to have as much relaxing time as you (can),” said Sokol.

The nurse visits Season’s Café nearly every shift. But it’s not just open to employees — all hospital visitors can eat there, too.

Guests scan into an entry gate with their credit card, mobile wallet or team member badge. Computer vision and sensors detect each item shoppers pick up or return, generating a virtual shopping cart. The cafeteria offers a variety of choices, including grab-and-go items, a salad bar and hot buffet offerings sold by container. Quickcharge, a division of Transact Campus, integrated with Just Walk Out technology in order to allow employees to use their badge to pay.

After shoppers leave, they are only charged for exactly what they walked out with. The frictionless shopping experience is designed to quickly get customers in and out. Around 2,000 customers — including visitors, physicians, volunteers and team members — visit the cafeteria Monday through Friday, with weekends averaging 1,000 customers per day. There’s been nearly 115,000 total shopping trips since the cafe reopened in April.

The technology has also allowed the Season’s Café to remain open longer. Monday through Saturday, third-shift employees and late-night visitors can access fresh food options 24 hours. The cafe is closed only from 2-6 a.m. on Monday mornings.

Sokol mostly works night shifts. Before the Just Walk Out technology, the cafeteria closed at 9 p.m., meaning he would often go the entire shift without eating.

The hospital doesn’t yet have specific metrics on how accurate the technology has been. But according to JJ Layton, the manager of food and nutrition services at St. Joseph’s Hospital, “I would have to venture to say ... almost perfect capture rate that we’re aware of.”

Craig Anderson, BayCare’s vice president of innovation, first heard about the technology a couple years ago at a meeting in Seattle, Washington. St. Joseph’s, a 615-bed hospital near Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, seemed like a natural fit.

“We know they’re the busiest cafeteria. They really needed the help,” said Anderson.

During the pandemic, the hospital had multiple vacant cashier positions, which contributed to long wait times. “So this technology has removed that roadblock and also enabled the people that were doing cash register work to now do something even larger,” said Anderson. The technology did not cause anyone to lose their job.

Anderson began working with Erica Salgado, BayCare’s director of food and nutrition services for the East Region. Adopting the new technology required extensive staff trainings, educating customers and listening to faculty’s needs. There was a “must-have” list. It was important to continue offering hot bar options and menu items from local vendors, instead of only pre-packaged meals.

Customers can fill different-sized containers with as much food as can fit, and they pay based on the size of the container. The container system uses a “volumetric” pricing model that paired with pay-by-lane pricing models to create the first system of its kind, according to Layton. The containers are sorted by specific price points into different lanes. Each customer generates an individual shopping cart when they walk into the cafeteria, so items are unable to be transferred between people, which is where the lanes come in.

In addition, Season’s Café has open-air merchandisers stocked with sandwiches, fruit cups and other ready-to-eat items as well as Lozier shelves holding snacks like chips and cookies.

“It’s never been done like this before,” said Anderson.

The cafe is testing the limits of what Amazon and Quickcharge’s technology is capable of. As with most innovation, it has required some problem-solving.

“Your goal as a customer is, of course, to ... fill that sucker full. Get everything you want in that container,” said Layton. “Our goal as operators is of course to make sure we do it in a responsible manner.”

As in, it wouldn’t be “responsible” to allow customers to stuff caviar and lobster tails into the same container as chicken nuggets. The cafeteria did some menu remodeling and re-evaluated pricing, but visitors continue to enjoy a variety of options.

“We hope we can take this further and elsewhere, we just need to make sure everything is what we want. We’re still in that innovation phase, but so far it’s going great,” said Anderson.