Generative AI is dissolving the economic logic that made standardized enterprise software the only practical choice for most companies. What replaces it will be shaped not just by the rapidly evolving capabilities of this new technology, but by leaders willing to ask a harder question: Which workflows do we actually need to own?
Many Aldi stores have both regular checkouts and self-checkouts, and if you opt for the latter, you'll want to make sure that you know how to get your ID scanned so that you can be well on your way with your alcohol as soon as possible.
Chef Robotics has recently reached a remarkable milestone by completing 100 million servings in production, underscoring the company's commitment to innovation and the importance of automation in food manufacturing.
"Vending is NOT fully passive income. I'd call it semi-passive, like 70% passive. Social media makes it look like you fill machines once a month and money rains in."
The way Costco's automated pay stations work is that members stand in line and a Costco employee scans the person's membership card and all of the items in their cart. When the member reaches the self-serve payment kiosk, they scan their membership card and pay. The system eliminates the conveyor belt and any interaction with a cashier.
Restaurant owners like Panjwani are caught in the middle of a growing battle of new and established reservation platforms vying for their business. The two dominant players for more than a decade, OpenTable and Resy, are now facing a wave of fresh competition from high-end services and even delivery apps all trying to win lucrative bookings at exclusive establishments.
Retail point-of-sale systems today offer a wide range of options for peripherals and hardware. Their technical specifications play a major role in selection, and big retailers often choose multiple vendors to reduce a single point of failure. This gives them an advantage to negotiate price or support as well. Technically, these peripherals also require updating with new models and may have new feature sets. This necessitates the redevelopment of point-of-sale applications, increasing development costs.
Since May 2025, we have been updating a significant proportion of both colleague operated and self-service checkouts across all of our stores to make them more efficient, with the refresh due to complete very soon. The new technology will ensure we can continue to offer our customers excellent levels of service, now and into the future.
Do you remember when 2007 was dubbed "The year of mobile"? That was when Apple launched the iPhone and firmly established mobile as the secondary channel for online engagement, after the desktop. The company's approach was so revolutionary that, in today's world, the mobile experience has become the primary experience for brand and customer interaction. More people search for products and services on their phones than on any other platform.
Picture this: a couple walks into a restaurant on a Friday night. They glance around, choose their table, and settle into their seats. Before they've even opened their menus, their server already has a pretty good idea whether they'll leave 10% or 25%. It sounds like mind reading, but after talking with dozens of servers over the years, I've learned it's more like pattern recognition honed by thousands of interactions.
Would you like extra fries? Would you like to go large? Not all people, but I think there's definitely a large proportion of people who may feel judged in those instances, and may say no. Plus, there's really good product imagery on the terminals, so you can see the product, you can see what's in it, you can see all the other products linked to it as well. So there's that.
Claude - or "Claudius," as its vending persona was known, but we'll stick to the former for the sake of clarity - had pretty much free reign to accomplish its goal. It was allowed to research products, set prices, and even contact outside distributors, with a team of humans at the AI safety firm Andon Labs handling the physical tasks like restocking. Meanwhile, it also fielded requests from employees in a Slack channel, who asked for everything from chocolate drinks to the street drug methamphetamine to broadswords.
Retail is no longer just about buying and selling products; it is about the experience. In a world where online shopping offers instant gratification, physical stores face the challenge of providing something the internet cannot: a personal, tactile, and efficient service. The checkout counter has traditionally been a point of friction, with long queues, slow card machines, and impersonal interactions. However, the modern Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) system has completely reshaped this dynamic.
Folks have griped on Reddit that their locations do not offer self-checkout options (though many report that their locations haven't undergone any recent remodels). Others have shared frustration with Publix's existing self-checkout system, which they claim only offers a small bagging area, and when they move their full bags off the scale, it flags the employee - effectively wasting both the customer's and the employee's time.
