Target near me has all the booze locked up. They have a button you can press to get an employee to open the cases for you to buy something. I waited 10 minutes for someone to come and open up the case to buy a bottle of Campari. Nobody ever showed up. I wrote Target to tell them I’ll be looking elsewhere from now on for any item they keep in a case.
I wonder if anyone considered installing a camera and a remote-triggered lock so a cashier, manager, or security person could just buzz someone in. All that crap is SUPER cheap now.
Or machine vision to track item pickups and follow the person around the store and out. You may need a cover over the items to have them pause to lift a plastic cover to give the system enough to confidently note that person X has collected item Y and placed it in cart/pocket/prison pocket.
I’ve seen convenience stores that have a buzzer that turns on (very, VERY annoying buzzer) whenever someone opens up the liquor fridge in their store. This signals that someone is picking up some beer. It cannot be avoided. You want to be quick to get what you want and not have your ears buzzed off, but shoplifting alcohol is really hard that way. You can get it quick anyway.
Both are correct. It’s too expensive AND it doesn’t help sales. There are no reps around to unlock the doors, why would you wait to buy?
Target near me has all the booze locked up. They have a button you can press to get an employee to open the cases for you to buy something. I waited 10 minutes for someone to come and open up the case to buy a bottle of Campari. Nobody ever showed up. I wrote Target to tell them I’ll be looking elsewhere from now on for any item they keep in a case.
10 minutes for a bottle of alcohol? That’s bullshit. I’ve never seen a place where the liquor is locked up near me.
I wonder if anyone considered installing a camera and a remote-triggered lock so a cashier, manager, or security person could just buzz someone in. All that crap is SUPER cheap now.
Or machine vision to track item pickups and follow the person around the store and out. You may need a cover over the items to have them pause to lift a plastic cover to give the system enough to confidently note that person X has collected item Y and placed it in cart/pocket/prison pocket.
Nearfield (NFC) was supposed to do this. I was supposed to be able to fill a cart and just push it out the store and be charged.
Yeah I remember an at in the 90s of rolling a shopping cart without scanning and here we are 30 years on… Still scanning…
Well, it’s not NFC but Amazon has some convenience stores that can do it, I think there’s a limit on the number of items though.
I can just imagine a shopping cart full of NFC transceivers screaming out there serial numbers simultaneously.
I’ve seen convenience stores that have a buzzer that turns on (very, VERY annoying buzzer) whenever someone opens up the liquor fridge in their store. This signals that someone is picking up some beer. It cannot be avoided. You want to be quick to get what you want and not have your ears buzzed off, but shoplifting alcohol is really hard that way. You can get it quick anyway.
I’ve seen that before, but it was a LONG time ago. Very effective for small stores.