SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – Aldi grocery stores are a little late to the self-checkout world but recently placed them in Canastota. Shoppers have had mixed feelings about it.
At first, workers noticed that shoppers would only line up at the register, completely avoiding self-checkout. “A little bit tricky trying to get customers on board because we have a lot of seniors here at our store, the self-checkouts are cashless, you can’t get cashback, its only credit card so that makes it more difficult,” said Canastota Aldi Assistant Manager, Susan Tubbs. Now, customers embrace it especially if they only have a few items.
Many other stores already had self-checkout so people might be asking, why now? Aldi is a company that follows trends and noticed how much of a benefit self-checkout is for both customers and employees.
“We have a huge store and minimal employees so I think for Aldi’s it just took a minute for them to figure out how they could fit that into our culture here,” said Tubbs.
Aldi’s self-checkout lanes are a little different compared to other stores. “Cashiers are initially running those self-checkouts from a screen and then ringing out customers simultaneously, so it’s a dual job,” said Tubbs.
They have more of a job to do at the register, but they find self-checkout helpful when it comes to long lines and gives customers a faster checkout. “For the cashiers and for most of the managers it’s helping because we don’t need more than one cashier most of the time because everybody loves those self-checkouts,” said Tubbs.
Now that self-checkout is at Aldi’s, the company plans on expanding starting with the store in Fayetteville.
(This reporter works at the Fayetteville Aldi store)
