A jewel-osco supermarket in Barrington, Ill., is serving as a laboratory for technology that could change the way Americans shop for groceries. Shoppers swipe their customer-loyalty cards into a kiosk that dispenses a handheld scanner, then scan and bag groceries as they move down the aisles. When done, the shoppers enter an unstaffed checkout lane where they swipe their card and pay for the groceries, often never interacting with store personnel. "It's a very fast pass-through experience," says Bill Bishop, a retail consultant who lives in Barrington and has made that Jewel-Osco his primary grocery store. "Once people experience it, they're going to like it."
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