[devilbunny]

I'm sure that's great, but it's a bit impractical for groceries. Even the relatively small cost of an NFC tag is going to be a real problem given how thin most groceries' margins are (and how cheap small amounts of food can be, even now).

But groceries are one of the best examples of where this would be a big time-saver.

I will say that I really do prefer self-check in convenience stores, where a big purchase is three or four items. But for groceries... it's too much if you're actually doing a big shopping day.

[filcuk]

For larger shopping, I like to use the scanning gun. I get that it's used to track me, but the fact is I get to track the price, pack items as I go and just pay on the way out.

[Reason077]

Some of the UK supermarkets are bypassing the scanning gun now and just doing self-scan with an app. Works really well. Nice price checking feature in some of the apps too.

[WarOnPrivacy]

You kind of need it for the big & heavy stuff. I hit somewhere without one and of course half my basket was 50lb this and 32ct that.

[jareklupinski]

> Even the relatively small cost of an NFC tag is going to be a real problem given how thin most groceries' margins are (and how cheap small amounts of food can be, even now).

something that's been worrying me: how long until grocery stores stop keeping fresh fruit and vegetables because it just isn't worth it anymore?

or has produce always been a loss-leader to get people buying other things in the store...

maybe just put NFC tags on the milk and butter, and let people walk out with as many oranges as they can carry?

[Reason077]

Produce is not a loss-leader. Pretty solid margins if you compare market prices on produce with what the supermarkets sell them for.

And if you’ve been in any UK supermarket near closing time on a busy weekend day, you’ll see that they routinely sell out of many/most items before restocking overnight. Stuff that hits its best-before date gets marked down to sell. Generally speaking, there isn’t a huge amount being wasted.

[klondike_klive]

The waste is externalised. Supermarkets regularly renege on their agreements with farmers, leaving millions of tonnes of produce to rot.

Check out getfairaboutfarming.com

[Reason077]

It is certainly unfair to growers if supermarkets are reneging on purchase agreements. But the link you sent has just a single anecdotal "case study", and the site seems to be a marketing site for an organic food box supplier. Hardly by itself evidence of a systemic problem.

Besides, if a purchase agreement falls though with produce already grown, normally what happens is the produce is sold on the wholesale market instead. In that case, growers might receive a lower price, perhaps resulting in a loss, but that's not as bad as leaving it "to rot" and getting nothing at all.

Produce would typically only be dumped in the case of a huge market glut (when prices are so low that it is not even worth harvesting/transporting them), or if there are labour shortages making it difficult or uneconomical to harvest.

[unnamed76ri]

Supermarkets have put a lot into adding more organic options and just greater variety in general in their produce sections. I don’t think they lose money or that they are going anywhere.

Bananas for example sell for around $0.58/lb around here. Which seems unprofitable but you wouldn’t believe the size of the banana rooms that these grocers have at their warehouses. It is easily the largest space dedicated to a single sku in the warehouse.

[neonnoodle]

How much to swim in the banana pit?

[Mochsner]

You ever shopped at kroger? Their produce selection is so bad and/or rotten that I don't even want to buy produce when I shop there. They don't even care and I think use it to drive buying more predictable goods (like canned). Their subsidiary Pick N Save in the midwest was similar, but not near as bad as Kroger in the south.

We buy produce from the cheaper Aldi instead, or worst case, the overpriced Publix (if Aldi doesn't have it).

[delta_p_delta_x]

> We buy produce from the cheaper Aldi instead

Funnily enough, in the UK, Aldi produce is generally very fresh and still cheap. There's plenty of turnover, precisely because people shop at Aldi so much.

[bombcar]

That’s really the key I’ve found - fresh deliveries of produce are about the same everywhere; what matters is how fast the turnover is. And it varies by area which store is “the good one”.

[matthewdgreen]

When I started looking at RFID tech in 2004, the disposable tags cost maybe $.50-$1 but general consensus was the costs would follow a Moore’s law like trajectory, halving every 2-3 years until they were on even the cheapest items. And yet here we are 20 years later and I don’t see RFID checkout systems very often at all. Are the tags still really expensive? Or is it the extra cost of attaching them to packaging?

[ky0ung]

RFID tags are ~10c (Impinj) and are getting cheaper each year. they're widely used in apparel stores. think it'd be tough to justify attaching them to low value items in a grocery store. self checkout prob more effective using computer vision

[manmal]

Are you suggesting to put trillions of copper, silicon, and aluminum parts on disposable items like bananas, so people have a slightly better shopping experience?

[xboxnolifes]

We kind of already do that, just with plastic, adhesive, and ink.

[byyll]

My bananas don't have plastics, adhesive or ink and regardless, adding another chip to them won't make it any better.

[bombcar]

You’ve yet to experience the glory of individually shrink wrapped produce. Bananas and oranges especially egregious but the shrink wrapped watermelon was whole nuther world.

[xboxnolifes]

I was thinking more along the lines of produce stickers.

[byyll]

I've seen it, just rarely.

[manmal]

Yes, that should be reduced, not added to.

[infecto]

We already use plastic bags, paper bags, takeout food boxes, wrap products in plastic and sometimes styrofoam. From an economic perspective its not too far off to think that if the part gets cheap enough you can put it on everything.

[matthewdgreen]

I am not suggesting it. It was widely presented as inevitable once the costs dropped enough. Retail inventory management and checkout is expensive.

[manmal]

Apologies for the strawman then. I just hope humanity can pass on that one, for once.

[nothercastle]

Absolutely worth it

[claytongulick]

When I was messing with RFID for a fulfillment line to improve handling returns, the biggest challenge was orientation.

The cost for an RFID tag is minimal if you can guarantee the proper orientation. If you can't, they get very expensive (relatively speaking).

[djbusby]

Metrc charged $0.40 for single use RFID for cannabis plants starting in 2014.

[bluGill]

things like razors interfere and so they are not accurate enough to use. They probably work great in niches, but they are not a universal answer.

[Shinchy]

Not seen it on groceries, but I know Uniqlo use this same method and it's fantastic.