Just keep walking.

Prime Future 200: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy

If you visited me in San Francisco in 2019, there was a 97% chance I would take you to an Amazon Go. I loved these stores. You walked in, swiped your Amazon app to get past the barriers, picked up what you wanted to buy, and walked out. A receipt showed up in your inbox moments later.

There was no computer shouting as you self-check out, nor chit-chat with a cashier. You literally just walked out.

The only way to describe the customer experience was magical.

Amazon subtly named the technology "Just Walk Out." The company said it was piloting the technology with Amazon Go stores before rolling it out in Whole Foods and licensing it to other grocery chains.

Fast forward 5 years to April 2024, when Amazon announced that rollout is not happening.

“In 2018, Amazon started rolling out its Just Walk Out system, which was meant to revolutionize the retail experience with AI, worldwide.

The tech, which was only available at half of the e-commerce giant's Amazon Fresh stores, used a host of cameras and sensors to track what shoppers left the store with.

But instead of closing the technological loop with pure automation and AI, the company also had to rely on an army of over 1,000 workers in India, who were acting as remote cashiers.

According to The Information, the tech was simply far too slow and too expensive to implement, with outsourced cashiers reportedly taking hours to send back data so customers could get their receipts.

Instead of Just Walk Out, Amazon is now betting on scanners and screens embedded in the shopping cart called Dash Carts."

It turns out the magic of Just Walk Out technology was about as magical as Theranos' Edison machines.

On the one hand, womp womp…