How Grocers are Managing in the Age of Social Distancing

Amid the current health crisis many retailers are feeling the increased pressure to keep their doors open, shelves stocked, and shoppers/employees safe.

Food supply and grocery chain stores are defined as an essential business with their products and services experiencing high demand.

To reduce the exchange of personal items such as loyalty cards, digital coupons, smartphones, and ID cards, many food retailers are accelerating their evaluation and deployment of dedicated secondary scanning devices.

With a dedicated secondary scanning solution, the shopper can simply hold out their personal item, and the cashier can use the barcode scanner to read the presented information, without touching the personal item. This allows the shopper and cashier to minimize contact.

Without a secondary scanner, the cashier would be forced to take the loyalty card or personal item and either hand-key or conduct an additional scan into the system.

A secondary scanner can be used to read barcodes on loyalty cards/phone, digital coupons, ID cards for age restricted items, and bottom of the basket items.