Self-checkout was sold as the ultimate cost-cutter. Shift the work to customers, slash labor, win.
It didn’t work that way.
A Toast survey of 340 small and midsize retailers shows self-checkout use dropped from 43% in 2025 to 36% this year. The reason is simple and expensive: **merchandise is walking out the door**.
ECR Retail Loss data is brutal. Grocery stores saw a **22% jump in losses** the year after installing self-checkout. Stores with the kiosks suffered **33% higher product loss** than those without them. Theft + missed scans + wrong product codes = real money gone.
Customers hate it too when the cart is full. Constant alerts, weight mismatches, and calls for staff turn a “convenient” process into friction. As Dalhousie professor Sylvain Charlebois put it: retailers expanded the tech beyond the transactions it actually handles well.
The pullback is already visible. Dollar General ripped self-checkout out of roughly 12,000 stores in 2024. Five Below cut back the same year.
But retailers aren’t going analog. They’re just getting smarter about where they spend.
- 75% plan to increase tech spending in the next 12 months (up from 64%).
- Electronic shelf labels jumped 11 points year-over-year.
- 90% say they’ll use more AI.
- 88% believe AI will make their businesses more efficient.
The future isn’t pure self-checkout or pure staffed lanes. It’s hybrid: self-service for small baskets, humans for full carts and complicated purchases, and AI watching for errors and flagging help before the customer gets frustrated.
Speed. Choice. Help when needed. That’s the checkout that actually wins.