Self-Serve Checkouts A Mixed Bag For Grocers

It's a choice that's right up there with "paper or plastic," and it stirs no small amount of passion and debate in the grocery business: install self-service checkouts or staff the checkout with humans?

In Milwaukee, a market where grocery competition has ramped up to just shy of nasty, what a shopper experiences at the checkout has become a huge part of the retail equation as grocers seek to pry every single shopping trip away from one another.

The strategies couldn't be more different.

Piggly Wiggly Midwest won't touch the self-service machines.

"Of our 101 Piggly Wiggly stores, we do not have any stores with self checkouts," Gary Suokko, chief operating officer of the Sheboygan-based company, said in an email. "We have researched the possibility several times over the years and have decided against using them for various reasons."

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